Liberty Graphics gives size and speed an Agfa Titan HS boost

The four-decade-old company is equipped with a raft of wide-format machines, which include an Agfa Jeti 1224 HDC FTR, three eco-solvent and three solvent machines, besides an HP Latex.

Dhruv Bhatt, director at Liberty, “We were on the look-out for a better machine with proven credentials. The decision to purchase an Agfa Jeti Titan HS was easy as the machine prints at almost thrice the speed of our earlier machine.”

The Agfa Jeti Titan HS FTR is a six-colour flatbed printer with a flat-to-roll option. It also had additional two colours, light magenta and light cyan, a bigger bed size of 6.5x10ft, and ability to print white as well as online pre-coating. The 1,280-nozzle Ricoh Gen 5 inkjet printheads fitted in two rows, doubles the print productivity to 160sq/m per hour at a resolution of 720x1,200dpi.

“The additional two colours expands the colour gamut reproduction and produces smoother skin tones and the right colour, while the bigger bed size has thrown off the size restraints faced by us earlier,” said Bhatt. “The online pre-coating has mitigated the problem of uniform adhesion faced while printing. This is especially useful for printing on glass, ceramic tiles, stainless steel sheets and other high-polish surfaces.”

Dhruv who faced production challenges when he had large jobs which required quick turnaround times, distributed the job load among the three machines. With the addition of the latest kit, he is breathing easy and hopes to break-even in the next three and a half years. “The new machine is in a nascent stage and it is too early to give out conversion rates. We are definitely looking at a healthy growth of about 10-20% per annum.”

Liberty Graphics winner of the PrintWeek India Wide-format Printer of the Year 2015, when it came up trumps with works that included Abstract Buddha with 3D effect, Mumbai through an artist’s eyes, Translite and the painting, St Mark’s Basilica.