Are you considering adding a UV printer to your business? Are you a bit perplexed with making the right choice between all the printer models currently available? How do you pick the one that’s not only right for your business today, but right for you in the future as your business grows tomorrow and beyond?

You’ve come to the right place. This passage will help you make sense of the complexities of UV printers. You will totally understand how to select your own uv printer.

Hybrid/moving bed vs. Flatbed with Roll Media Option(RMO)

There are two basic system architectures used in flatbed printing:

UV Hybrid Printer: Moving media

The print zone is stationary and the media moves through it just like a roll-to-roll printer. This architecture is called hybrid printers, often designed primarily for roll media printing but with rigid printing capability

UV Flatbed with RMO: Moving gantry

Rigid: The media is held stationary on a vacuum table and the printhead carriage and gantry moves across the media.

RMO: The gantry stay still over the roll printing platform and the media is moving while printing. A typical roll-to-roll printing mode.

Pros and Cons of Hybrid Printer

Pros of Hybrid Printer

Lower capital cost, as the printer requires only accessory tables to allow feeding and exiting rigid media.

It requires less work space comparing to flatbed with roll printer.

2 in 1 function, possible to print almost all kinds of roll, and rigid media(accesory tables required)

It is capable to print roll media with thickness up to 10mm. (rigid media could be thicker with some mechanical adjustments)

It can print flexible or hard-kind roll media, such as softfilm, vinyle, leather, wallpaper, fabric, etc.

Hybrid printer has a big advantage in strechable media printing. With full expension of the media on moving-belt, media moves constantly without wrinkles, which is a big issue for roll-to-roll printing

Media-save: normal roll to roll printer needs media to be fixed on the take-up system before it prints, which means you will wast at least 2-meter media of each roll every time. Hybrid printer, in the contrary, can print from the very beginning of the roll.

In rigid printing, it has no limit on media length. You can print no matter 3m, 5m or longer boards as you need.

Cons of Hybrid Printer

Comparing to flatbed printer, hybrid printer will takes longer time to find the registration to print. Flatbed printer has registration pins and easier to mark on origns to print.

In rigid printing, flatbed printer performs better in printing quality than hybrid. Gantry-moving system is higher accuracy and less deviation than media-moving.

Pros and Cons of Flatbed with RMO

Pros of Flatbed with RMO

2 in 1 function: able to print rigid on flatbed and print roll media on Roll structure.

The print quality is optimized because only the printer is moving while the media is held stationary against the vacuum table

In addition to any rigid media, the true flatbed architecture enables any reasonable flat object to be printed upon, offering the ability to produce many unusual applications

With strong aluminum structure, the vaccum flatbed is possible to hold heavy media weigh up to 50kg/sqm.

Be able to print unusually smooth media such as glass, or materials that have an uneven surface such as plywood.

Multiple boards can be printed simultaneously by simply placing them on the flatbed. This is useful for smaller sized materials, such as pint-of-sale signs that printed in quantity.

Large displays tiled(over several boards) can be printed in perfect aligment so that when assembled, there are no discernable gaps caused by image/media skewing

Quick switch to RMO printing mode. Moving gantry upon to the RMO and then it can start to print Roll-to-Roll mode. Easy to operate.

Cons of Flatbed with RMO

Initial capital costs can be higher than hybrid printer.

Roll printing capability is limited to normal roll materials such as banner, vinyle, softfilm. Special roll material is not suitable to print on it, leather for example.

Conclusion

Your decision on whether to purchase a hybrid-style machine or true flatbed with roll should be driven by the potential for producing as much revenue as possible from a single printer.

First, you have to understand, which kind of media you will print more.

         Rigid material—choose flatbed with roll;

         Roll material—choose hybrid

Second, you have to check the budget that you have for adding a uv printer

Third, working space that you prepared for a uv printer.

And last, inquir professional guys in UV industry who may provide latest information and experience in UV printing. (这个 E-mail 受反垃圾邮件程序保护，您需要启用 JavaScript 才能查看。)