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![]() How Did The Graphics Market Get Where It Is Today?
By Michael Flippin
For those of you who took the time to read my first installment (and are also choosing to read this one) I want to thank you. For those of you who might have missed that March edition, I opened this three part series with an overview of the graphics market with some comments on Web Consulting’s analysis on inkjet’s growing position within the wide format graphics industry.
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How the Heck Did We Manage to Get Here? I bet that most of what you have read recently from consultants and analysts like me talks about how stagnant the sales of new wide format inkjet printers have been, how many of them are aqueous versus solvent and how big the opportunity UV-curable and flatbed printers will be. But rarely do I see the reasons “why” this has happened. And please don’t get me wrong as I won’t be able to do this in one column either. But I did want to provide our take on how inkjet, as well as other digital imaging techniques for the production of graphics, has led us to where we are today.
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When looking at the development of the market for wide format inkjet graphics I typically use 1993 as “Year One.” And as with most of what we do, there is always room for discussion. And I would be happy to share my thoughts and reasons should anyone wish to ask.
![]() If we think back to the early 1990’s there was no economical or simple way other than silver halide photography to produce a large formant (greater than 24”) image. And in most cases the quality, speed and cost of silver halide made that process impractical. Enter inkjet, a technology offering a constant cost per copy (no costs for plates or films) making print runs of one quite practical. And while the quality of inkjet 10 years ago was nowhere near the level of what printers of today are, the ability to provide text and graphics for one print, overshadowed any shortcomings of quality. So why was the adoption into signage slow relative to photography? Well, virtually all of these early systems were using water-based inks requiring sophisticated media (read expensive) with multi-layer receptive coatings. Most of these media grades were made by photographic paper manufacturers, and the longevity of the print was suitable enough for indoor use our some outdoor if protected by a UV laminate. This situation didn’t match the applications, the product environment, the technology or the skill set of most sign shops and graphic screen printers. Soon after the turn of the millennium most of the talk about inkjet was on flatbed platforms using UV-curable technology and then new solvent chemistries (eco, lo, light, etc). Solvent inkjet printers allowed shops to use familiar materials (e.g. uncoated vinyl) for applications that performed in outdoor settings. Flatbed printers allowed cost savings in printing directly onto rigid substrates, and since more than 50% of all printed graphics ended up on some kind of rigid substrate, that made sense. And while there are still questions surrounding UV-curable inkjet technology’s ability to stick on a very wide range of materials (this is a whole article in itself) many shops have achieved great success with these systems. Lower-priced UV-curable inkjet systems will continue to enter the market, expanding the availability of this technology to a larger number of shops and graphics providers.
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