Wide Format Printing: The Game Changer

Wide-format printers are creating a silent revolution in the world of digital printing. These printers which generally have a print width between 17 feet to 100 feet has become the default mechanism to print banners, posters, hoarding creatives, booth graphics, environmental graphics and a whole lot of signage requirements.

Wide format printers use a continuous roll of printing material rather than individual sheets. This makes them capable of handling large format printing requirements in an economical manner. They also offer fool proof printing in the sense that they use hot-air dryers to dry the paint quickly and prevent the prints from sticking to each other, even as they come out of the printer. 

Wide Format Printers use a variety of technologies depending in the type of ink used in them. Broadly speaking, they are: Aqueous, Solvent, Dye sublimation, UV and Pen/plotter types. 

Why Wide Format Printing? 

Wide format printing is being hailed as one of the largest growth areas in the printing industry. But how did this happen? With advertising and digital marketing becoming more and more high-pitched and high-budget activities, companies started looking for more appealing, innovative, eye-catching and distinct ways of promoting themselves and their offerings. This obviously calls for wide format printing. For example, large banners, vehicle wraps, and point-of-purchase displays cannot be easily printed in the short run format and require wide format printing for ease-of-use and scalability. 

This led to higher adoption of wide format printing which reduced the initial price point over time. This in turn helped printers take up more and more services for their customers and evolve from being mere printing companies to full-fledged marketing services providers. 

Operational Benefits 

In addition to the business benefits, wide format printing offers various operational benefits to printing companies and their customers.

• A wide format printer makes use of the droplet technology system. This ensures that the dots per inch cannot be distinguished when the image is printed out, resulting in a sharp and well-defined image. This is true whether the printer is running at normal speed, high speed, or in enhanced mode. The quality stays consistent in all these modes.
• Wide format printers have the ability to distinguish between image and text in the printed matter clearly and print them without any error. Not all office printers can do this, which is why one can notice text and images overlapping with each other although that is not the original design.
• Wide format printers can print at very high speed without compromising on the quality. Which means: several large banners, vehicle wraps, posters, booth graphics and environmental graphics can be printed in no time. This gives marketing departments of companies the ability to plan for any new rollout at short notice and make changes at short notice thereby avoiding panic situations. This justifies investment in wide format printing which further helps improvise the technologies, creating a virtuous cycle.
• Wide format printing is compliant with various eco-friendly, environment-friendly, green and sustainability initiatives from the industry and governments worldwide. Wide-format inkjet printers make use of UV-curing inks, and technologies that provide an alternative to using high VOC inks. This makes it easy to recycle material printed using wide format printers, in a cost-effective manner. Further, UV-curing inks support printing at high speeds which adds to their utility value making hybrid wide-format inkjet systems the most popular choice as a printing mechanism.

Hillview Digital Printing has been one of the early adopters of wide format printing helping brands achieve a first mover advantage in the competitive marketplace of today.