Northeast Color is the First User of EFI’s New Hybrid LED Inkjet Platform

A new platform for growth with even better color and faster throughput

The printer series’ first user, Northeast Color, specializes in environmental branding, signage, and graphics for the franchise industry. The VUTEk h3 will make Northeast Color more efficient on stock inventory items the company produces while also opening the door to new products requiring higher-end imaging.

Northeast Color also operates a pair of EFI VUTEk UV hybrid printers, and when the company sought to expand its business to address growing print capacity needs, Northeast Color President Jalmar Dijkstra saw a unique opportunity based on the VUTEk h series’ strong capabilities. 

“We were looking at printers from EFI and other manufacturers when EFI presented us with the option of being the first installation site for the h3,” Dijkstra says. “It is the next step for us in terms of offering our clients better quality and higher capacity. 

“The name of the game in our market is volume,” he adds. “A single franchise client can easily represent hundreds of locations, and at any given time there are multiple franchise sites that need to switch out and install new graphics. Our newest printer is designed to give us more agility and greater technical abilities to better serve our customers by producing even higher volumes of work on a wide range of substrates.”

“Northeast Color turned out to be an ideal first site for our new h series,” says Ken Hanulec, co-general manager, EFI Inkjet Display Graphics. “The company has a strong understanding of EFI and our total technology offering, plus Northeast Color’s high production volumes and product diversity will put the printer through its paces to ensure it exceeds market requirements for high-quality, high-volume production graphics printing.”

The printer series – the first hybrid VUTEk LED printer offering 1,200 dots per inch (dpi) resolution – features new high-velocity 7-picoliter grayscale printhead imaging for precision dot placement and consistency from print to print at high production speeds. VUTEk h series printers can run high volumes on a broad range of rigid and flexible substrates up to 2 inches thick at full rated speeds thanks to automated material handling options to meet nearly any production need.

“We could tell the h3 model would really be a fit for us because of the quality it offers with 7-picoliter-drop imaging and its phenomenal speeds,” says Christopher Shaw, production manager, Northeast Color. “For example, we have a repeat job printing wood grain images on PVC, and we can produce 40 to 45 pieces of that job in a single shift on our current UV-inkjet printers; with the VUTEk h3, we will be able to do that in half the time.”