When someone claims they can print everything on anything. And then they go and do it.

Enter Fine Cut and you see a flourishing company, the array of equipment for a number of different sectors is in full view. This view is enhanced by not one, but two swissQprint UV flatbed printers.

Love at first sight

From the purchase of their first Impala in 2012, Fine Cut fell in love with the swissQprint technology. So much so, that when the opportunity to transition to LED curing became available in the shape of the Impala LED, the company recognised another way to further develop their business. This was the primary driver for Fine Cut’s decision to add this next generation printer. In fact, speciality printer Fine Cut has been the first print service provider to invest in the new swissQprint Impala LED printer in the United Kingcom.

The new 2.5×2 metre large format printer is configured for six colours (CMYK, light Cyan, light Magenta) plus white, primer and varnish. It is used to produce a broad range of precision industrial applications for clients in the medical, automotive, marine and agricultural sectors, as well as more conventional signage and graphics work. Digital print manager, Simon Tourle, explains: “While the original Impala exceeded all our expectations of digital output quality, UV curing with mercury vapour lamps still presented limitations for high precision work on more challenging substrates, due to the media distortion caused by the high temperature process.”

swissQprint Impala has surpassed the quality achievable with the screen printing process.

Among others, Fine Cut caters for the medical, automotive, marine and agricultural sectors.

Double Productivity

Fine Cut have seen an immediate impact from the Impala LED since it was installed in October 2017. “The new Impala LED has delivered a noticeable step up in speed”, explains Tourle. First of all, there is the acceleration of the printing process itself thanks to more productive print heads. Secondly, Tourle points out the LED curing, which removes the need for warm-up and cool-down cycles between jobs. “In practice, jobs that took an hour to print on the first generation Impala are now taken care of in 20 to 30 minutes. As a matter of fact, our flatbed productivity has more than doubled”, he concludes.

Going Green

Fine Cut are committed to reducing the environmental impact at every possible opportunity, as an integral part of their ongoing business strategy. Their duty and care stance towards the natural environment has led to them undergoing testing to be SC21 (www.sc21.org.uk) certified to attest their consistently high standards of working practices and product quality, which includes stringent environmental clauses.

The addition of their existing Impala in 2012 allowed Fine Cut to produce traditionally screen printed overlays on a digital platform, improving quality and reducing the waste associated with screen printing. With their latest pur-chase of the Impala LED Fine Cut now produce over 60 percent of their work through digital means at almost half the energy, meaning they have cut their costs and energy usage down significantly. This not only gives the company additional funds, but also allows Fine Cut to keep up their ongoing environmental strategy.