Fremont, CA (Dec. 14, 2017) — Safety and identification signage production company Safehouse Signs has boosted its throughput and quality, adding LED digital inkjet production with an EFI VUTEk GS2000LX Pro wide-format printer from Electronics For Imaging Inc. (Nasdaq: EFII). The new investment at Roanoke, VA-based Safehouse Signs is one of the many major upgrades in technology and infrastructure under owner Kevin Hudson, a veteran financial services executive who purchased the 40-year-old company late last year.
“We were looking for capabilities we didn’t have, and the new VUTEk is much faster and prints at higher resolutions than our other digital equipment,” Hudson said. “As a manufacturer, it is important for us to offer a wide range of products to our distributor partners. The capabilities of this new printer help us do that, plus it creates new growth opportunities with higher-end specialty graphics and point-of-purchase displays.”
An upgrade from solvent and UV to “cool cure” LED
Safehouse supplemented its existing printer line-up with the new printer purchase, a two-meter wide hybrid device that can run both rolls and flat/rigid materials. The company is now benefitting from the higher consistency and throughput the printer provides. Plus, the printer’s “cool cure” LED technology offers lower operating costs, as it uses less energy for curing or drying compared with other digital devices at Safehouse. The LED technology also expands the range of compatible substrates Safehouse can print on, including thin or specialty substrates that cannot withstand the heat of other drying or curing methods.
“The versatility this printer gives us in terms of both materials and print quality is eye opening,” according to Hudson. “There is a lot we can do with this printer. We took sample signs produced on the printer to the National Safety Council Show and received overwhelmingly positive feedback from attendees who were interested in our expanded capabilities.”
New opportunities with higher-quality imaging
The printer features EFI’s 7-picoliter UltraDrop Technology, which provides true multi-drop addressability in each dot position, four-level grayscale imaging and two ink density levels for high apparent resolution and high-definition quality. The printer not only delivers outstanding smoothness in shadows, gradients and transitions, but prints also have superb text quality in type sizes down to four points – something that has already expanded the range of products Safehouse provides. “Now, we can digitally print products requiring higher resolution and smaller font types that we just could not do before with a UV-cure printer,” explained Hudson.
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About EFI
EFI is a global technology company, based in Silicon Valley, and is leading the worldwide transformation from analog to digital imaging. We are passionate about fueling customer success with products that increase competitiveness and boost productivity. To do that, we develop breakthrough technologies for the manufacturing of signage, packaging, textiles, ceramic tiles, and personalized documents, with a wide range of printers, inks, digital front ends, and a comprehensive business and production workflow suite that transforms and streamlines the entire production process.
