EFI H1625 LED Wide Format Inkjet Printer

 EFI H1625 LED
Wide Format Inkjet Printer
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W
ith most entry-level wide or superwide format inkjet printers you get a stripped down version of a
larger sibling. That’s what is meant with “entry level”, but I for one was surprised to ﬁnd the EFI
H1625 not being stripped down at all.
Except for its size, this wide format LED inkjet printer comes equipped with features that you’d only expect to
ﬁnd in larger models.
The EFI H1625 LED is a hybrid (roll and sheetfed) UV LED curing inkjet printer commercialised under the
EFI brand. It is an entry-level model wide format inkjet that is excellent for printers and service bureaus who
want to start tapping into the growing market of large format printing. The EFI H1625 is inexpensive and has
a small footprint, but after having spent a day with it in a showroom full of far bigger inkjet printers like the
EFI VUTEk HS100 Pro and EFI VUTEk GS5500LXr Pro, I can only say I was impressed by its capabilities,
performance and output quality.
As my test image for this product evaluation I used a colourful poster of a group of carnival masks with lots of
glow and splashes of bright colour. I evaluated the printer on performance, print quality, media handling and
ﬂexibility, pricing, sound level and features in general. I’ll start with an overview of the markets in which I believe this printer to have a broad appeal.
The appeal of the EFI H1625
Due to its price and capabilities, I can see the H1625 appealing to small and medium-size print shops. Shops
focused on production volumes will love the high speed of this printer and its ability to run uninterrupted —
continuously. As with any EFI printer, performance is among the best you can expect from LED printing.
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Printing shops that print large format media and innovative substrates will love the
H1625’s advanced features and high resolution modes. The H1625 being an LED
printer will give these shops an extra appeal
with an eco-minded customer base.
Finally, service bureaus will love the ability
to use the EFI H1625 in combination with
EFI products such as DirectSmile that enable them to deliver a combination of
printed and digital marketing materials.
EFI’s idea of the H1625 LED seems to be
to oﬀer printers and service providers who
were previously using medium format printers,
a chance to ramp up their productivity and market attraction. They can achieve this by delivering their (potential) customers a larger choice of media, with an ecologically justiﬁed technology and at the same quality as
what they were used to before.
To EFI the H1625 LED is undoubtedly seen as a benign Trojan horse: once a printer or service bureau has
worked with the H1625, chances are they’ll want to buy bigger models as they will rapidly become aware of
the potential these larger machines have as double-digit growth drivers.
The H1625 LED therefore oﬀers an excellent print quality at relatively high speed, with low energy costs and
a small eco footprint. The printer measures 348cm across and can handle rigid and ﬂexible substrates with a
maximum width of 165cm. Substrates can be up to 5.08cm thick, which allows for a broad range of applications.
One rather unusual feature for a printer this price and size: the automatic thickness sensor. This sensor is embedded in the print head and ensures the best adjustment of the head for any thickness.
Flexible handling
As with any EFI inkjet printer, the metal hood of the print head can be easily disengaged from the head mechanism itself, which helps printers maintain the head and parts under the hood in good working condition. In
my case, it helped me see the thickness sensor in action. The system turns out to be quite simple and foolproof.
Below the head is a small metal “stick” protruding from the bottom. This stick touches the substrate surface
during a preparation phase that takes a few seconds and via a built-in sensor measures the thickness of the substrate with incredible accuracy.
I saw the thickness sensor perform just as quickly and accurately with a light PVC plate of about 2mm thick as
it did with a vinyl sheet that was about as thick as a sheet of A4 paper. The vacuum belt drive system has variable control and is the same belt as used with the H1625’s larger siblings. It held the substrate nicely ﬂat over
the entire print run. Only very thin, ﬂexible media warped a little bit at the edges, but after checking the output itself it didn’t seem to aﬀect the printed result any bit.
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Resolution matters
Another unique feature for an entry-level LED inkjet is the printer’s maximum resolution, which tops out at
1200 x 600 dpi. Although most applications will only need a maximum resolution of 600 x 600 dpi, it’s always
nice to have a nice margin of two higher resolutions. Furthermore, the H1625 has eight levels of variable-drop
grayscale. The ability to precisely modulate the size and shape of individual ink drops, as well as accurately
place them, lets variable-drop jetting technology produce smooth tonal variations and extremely ﬁne features
— exactly what demanding advertisers, photographers and artists want.
This doesn’t mean the H1625 has to slow down to a crawl to deliver the best quality. Its maximum speed is
42.3m2/hr. This performance is without white printing and of course not at the highest resolution. In Ultra
Quality mode the H1625 still achieves a nice 7.4m2/hr at the highest resolution.
Although the EFI representative who was with me during testing assured me the H1625 wouldn’t be used at
the highest resolution possible, I still think it’s a feature that will appeal to service bureaus, or more speciﬁcally
to photographers’ service bureaus. Photographers — certainly art photographers — are a special kind of person. They crave for resolution, even if nobody can tell the diﬀerence between 600dpi or 1200dpi detail at a
distance of one metre, which is the normal viewing distance for a picture with a width of over 50cm.
For this market, service bureaus will need to stress the fact the H1625 is capable of a 900 x 900 dpi resolution.
Combined with the highest quality mode and the ability of white printing, I believe this will be a trump card
for service providers who want to compete on quality and detail for large photographic prints to be shown at
exhibitions. The printer’s media capabilities are an added beneﬁt.
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My test image certainly looked good and I didn’t have to move back to make the dots merge into smoothness.
In addition, there was no banding at all, although I feared there would be because in contrast with photographic printers — if you leave the printer’s two canopies open (which you shouldn’t do for safety reasons) you
can actually see how the print head lays down the ink in... bands.
Controls and benefits
All popular desktop ﬁle formats can serve as sources for outputting with the H1625 LED: PostScript 3, EPS,
TIFF and PDF. Colour modes RGB and CMYK are supported. Of course, the H1625 ships with the EFI
Fiery XF RIP, with bi-directional communication between Fiery XF and printer.
The H1625 supports RIP and print-on-demand and can print pre-ripped ﬁles at the printer interface. Audit
information on print jobs can be analysed and managed. The H1625 can also be integrated with EFI Web-toPrint and MIS/ERP solutions, using native JDF connectivity.
Ecological footprint
EFI doesn’t actively encourage the use of mercury lamps for curing anymore and the H1625 LED reﬂects this.
The printer uses the latest LED technology. LED has many beneﬁts of which the cost savings are amongst the
most interesting.
Energy assessments carried out by Fogra have conﬁrmed that EFI’s VUTEk superwide format printers with
LED curing show energy reductions of up to 82% when compared with devices that use conventional mercury
arc lamps. Even in print-ready mode, the company’s LX printers with “cool curing” LEDs are shown to save up
to 77% in electricity usage because the LEDs are oﬀ when the machine is idle between jobs.
Depending on the type of machine, its size, etc, the calculations of Fogra’s Energy Eﬃciency Project (“Energy
eﬃciency of large and small format printing systems”) have demonstrated that users can save around €16,000
every year on power consumption.
LED technology has more added value than cost savings alone. The relatively cool temperatures of a print head
using LEDs instead of mercury lamps allow for a far broader range of media and substrates you can print on.
One of my tests was to try print the test image on a PVC corrugated board with the sheets no thicker than
0.3mm. The heat of a mercury lamp would simply melt this type of board, but the image printed just ﬁne on
the H1625.
Some Chinese ink manufacturers have tried to convince users in online forums and LinkedIn professional
groups that inks for LED are more toxic and cure less well than mercury speciﬁc formulas. Although this is
based on experiences with very early LED systems, their comments more or less “stick” due to the fact that
many printers still lack experience with LED printing.
The facts, however, are more on the side of LED technology than they are on mercury. For starters, the toxicity
of inks made for LED curing is no greater than that of other inks. In fact, due to the lower heat dissipation of
LED curing lamps, the emission of toxic fumes from the vaporisation of the inks is much less than with the old
mercury technology. One printer operator who regularly switches between both technologies told me he goes
home with a headache after a day working at the mercury curing printer at his company, but he leaves with no
problems at all after spending a day with the LED printer.
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Inks
That leaves us with the remarks involving curation. Due to the online horror stories, which can’t be veriﬁed
anyway, some printers still fear an LED printer like the H1625 will not cure the ink well.
To comment on this, we should ﬁrst of all make a diﬀerence between ﬂexible and rigid media. Inks for ﬂexible
media are specially formulated to follow the media’s ﬂexing and bending. These inks always have a feel like
they’re made from rubber — they just cannot be as smooth as the ink type used for rigid media. The “rubbery”
feeling may give the impression the curation isn’t perfect — despite the fact that it is.
Secondly, we shouldn’t forget that bad curing can also occur with mercury speciﬁc inks. However, in general
and when the printer knows his job, LED inks will cure just as nicely as mercury inks, provided each is used
under the conditions and for the type of printer and media they were designed for.
In the case of the EFI H1625 LED, the ink supply is ensured by one-litre bottles. The inks that were available
to me for my review were specialised inks for best curing on ﬂexible materials, which EFI developed in cooperation with 3M. For rigid substrates, EFI develops its own inks, which are optimised for their LED systems.
With the H1625 comes the ability to print in CMYK and White — the printer has two White channels.
Each white ink cartridge sits at either end of the print head. This ensures a consistently high performance. In
the case of the H1625 , white printing is at half the CMYK printing speed.
Conclusion
Despite the EFI H1625 LED being commercialised as an entry level wide format printer, it’s more than a
stripped down version of EFI’s larger equipment. The printer has an appealing price setting, performs well and
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has the ﬂexible media capabilities of LED technology. It runs at low cost and will appeal to small and medium
sized printers and service bureaus.
Although the printer is designed to run for continuous production of all kinds of printing jobs, my personal
feel of this smaller device is that it will also appeal to service providers for higher quality print jobs, such as art
and photo printing.
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