BIG emotion [capacity]

Print Action, Feb 2005 by Robinson, Jon

"Like any industry sector, there are idiosyncrasies that are specific to large format that the everyday, 40-inch commercial printer doesn't run into. When you make a mistake, you make one that costs a lot of money."

- Mike PiIIo, sales manager, Eclipse Imaging

ECLIPSE IMAGING CALLS ITS new million dollar technology The Digital Paint Gun. Better known as an Inca digital flatbed printer, the device is built around some of those incredible inkjet printing-head advances that everyone expects to forever alter the printing industry. In terms of digital flatbed, sign printers and screen printers will need to adapt sooner rather than later, as Mike Pillo, sales manager of Burlington-based Eclipse, says, "It's certainly not going to happen tomorrow or next year, but I believe once they get the speed up with these machines, even a little more so than the next-generation, it will eventually take over."

The next digital flatbed printers will be able to run at twice the speed currently available on the market, which is already measured at hundreds of square feet per hour. And most of these devices can handle the strange and exciting print medias that can bring innovation to clients. Eclipse's Inca, for example, can run media that is 1.5-inches thick. "It is one of the presses I am most impressed with, relative to all of the new technology that has come out," says Pillo. "You have the ink density of screen and the resolution of litho. It is kind of the best of both worlds."

The best world for Eclipse would be made from more national large-format campaigns, where lithographic presses handle the long runs, usually anywhere from 500 to 2,000 pieces, and digital presses handle runs of 50 or less. More and more national large-format campaigns are being built on versioning, where, for example, there might be 20 designs for the same project and the client needs 10 pieces of each. The Inca helps Eclipse take advantage of this trend, whether it is posters for in-store specials or for transit shelters or something similar.

One of Eclipse's biggest clients is TJ Maxx, which has a self-named chain of similar stores throughout the United States - some 800 stores. "I would say we are doing weekly national campaigns for them," says Pillo, conceding this client was clearly part of the rationale behind purchasing The Digital Paint Gun.

While he expects the Inca to open up many new doors, most national campaigns continue to rely on lithographic technology. "What makes us unique is our diversity and our capacity," says Pillo, after he suggests that Eclipse has almost every technology available to large-format printing because of a production commitment made by Adams Outdoor (the fifth-largest outdoor advertiser in the U.S.) when it purchased portions of different Canadian companies to form Eclipse Imaging, two years ago.

Today, Eclipse's 80,000-square-foot facility in Burlington, Ontario, also has four huge Harris presses, each 77 inches in width and 40-ish years in age, two 4-colour presses, a 5-colour and a 6-colour, a computer-to-screen system and three Colorspan digital printers. The Harris presses are old and obviously lack automation, but Pillo believes most of the company's capital investment will continue with digital equipment.

The attraction to digital large-format versioning, and the new campaigns it can secure, comes from the fact that production of large-format printing, on average, is worth around 10 per cent of the media buy. This margin which is relatively large when compared to most commercial print work, is also attracting many commercial sheetfed printers to the market. In fact, the digital large-format market is already very competitive and fast-approaching commodity pricing problems. This is why leading large-format printers continue to push the envelope of their craft, applying the innovation so many commercial printers desperately seek.

"Like any industry sector, there are idiosyncrasies that are specific to large format that the everyday, 40-inch commercial printer doesn't run into," says Pillo, suggesting it takes specific technical ability to make large print appealing at a 15 per cent dot. "When you make a mistake you make one that costs a lot of money. It's not like when you have a 40-inch job that is worth a couple of thousands of dollars. If it goes bad, you might have $800 to swallow," says Pillo. "If you make a mess of a billboard and you have to reprint a billboard it could be $15,000 or $20,000 in cost, easily."