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PRODUCT PORTFOLIO

Star product
Roland VersaExpress RF-640

An extended inkset makes this eco-solvent stalwart stand out, Barney Cox
partners with ErgoSoft for the front-ends
for its Texart range of dye-sub textile
printers.
How fast is it?
As you’d expect the use of eight separate
colours rather than two pairs of four does
reduce throughput but not dramatically.
“There is a difference, it is slower, but
that said it is no slouch,” Goleniowski
says. “It can happily produce 8m²/hr
compared to 11m²/hr for the four-colour
RF but given the advantages in terms of
quality you wouldn’t compare them head
to head. It will easily produce 50m² per
day and if you consider that a lot of the
work the eight colour machine will take
on is currently produced using a mixture
of cut coloured vinyl and print, you cut
out the laborious process of laying up the
cut vinyl and there is no need to match
What does it do? high street. To date there has either been print to vinyl saving a lot of time in art-
Specifications working.”
Based on Roland DG’s established a compromise on the colour accuracy of
VersaExpress RF-640 1.6m/64in roll-fed Type Roll-fed eco- printed output or the reversion to older What is the USP of the product?
eco-solvent printer, the new eight-colour solvent piezo time-consuming techniques such as cut
incarnation adds orange, green, red and printer coloured vinyl to ensure spot on specials. The extended colour gamut and, thanks
light black to the standard CMYK set and to the light black, photographic repro-
is the first eco-solvent machine to offer Width 1.6m How does it work? duction quality in a machine that can
that configuration of colours. “It reaches At the heart of the machine is Roland’s produce durable output for outdoor use
the colours that other eco-solvents can’t, Number of colours VersaExpress RF-640 eco-solvent (the output has a three years UV resist-
Eight: CMYK plus
enabling it to hit 99% of the Pantone+ red, orange, green printer. This is an eight-channel roll-fed ance warranty for exterior use).
solid coated colour range,” says Roland and light black machine using piezo heads that has been “Machines with an extended gamut have
DG head of sales for UK and Ireland Rob around for about four years and, accord- tended to struggle with outdoor durabil-
Goleniowski. Speed Up to ity,” adds Goleniowski.
10.5sqm/hr ing to Goleniowski, has “always had a
When was it launched and what reputation as a sturdy printer that keeps How easy is it to use?
market is it aimed at? Workflow ErgoSoft going day in and day out to churn work Anyone familiar with Rolands, and other
RIP
“It was officially launched on 16 October out”. eco-solvent printers, will be comfortable
2018 but it had been previewed at Fespa Price Printer finding their way around the hardware.
and Sign & Digital UK earlier in the £12,999, inks How fast/productive is it? As for the ErgoSoft RIP, while he admits
year,” says Goleniowski. “At both shows £85.99 per 500ml While the hardware is exactly the same as it is different to the standard VersaWorks
it received a fantastic response. The over- its four-colour counterpart the eight offering and that many Roland customers
all solution was wanted and the print 210x297mm/600x400mm printheads and ink channels each carry a choose its printers because the software
quality was stopping people in their Feed capacity 30mm separate colour, whereas the four colour makes them so easy to use, he doesn’t see
tracks.” The key demand for many pro- configuration used two channels per col- that as an issue.
spective users is the ability to better hit our. The main difference is that rather “ErgoSoft itself is easy to use and offers a
challenging brand colours across a num- than using Roland’s own VersaWorks lot of automation. Also, the type of cus-
ber of exterior and interior applications. front-end it uses the ErgoSoft RIP, which tomer buying this machine will be famil-
“A lot of brand colours are very hard to iar with running multiple RIP platforms,
reproduce out of CMYK,” he says, both is better suited to handling the extended so won’t be fazed by not having
for high-end brands and big names on the colour gamut separation. Roland already VersaWorks.”
“It reaches the colours that other eco-solvents can’t.”

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