Since April 2014, a new Inca Onset S20i flatbed UV inkjet printer has been running at full speed at 3Motion. The large format printing and visual concepts company in Lokeren, which presents itself as a flexible player with short delivery times, needed a fast and versatile large format printer. After four months of production with the Inca Onset S20i, all you see here are happy faces.


3Motion is a young company in every sense of the word. Young, because the firm has only been around for four years and employs mostly young people. But equally young because you immediately notice that this close-knit team has a healthy dose of perseverance and is not afraid to roll up their sleeves. A formula that proved to work, as in those four years the family business grew from two to no less than 12 employees.


Flexibility is key

""3Motion profiles itself primarily as a total solution provider,"" says managing director Wouter Mouton. ""We work a lot for retailers, real estate and construction companies, but equally for resellers such as booth builders, graphic design companies and designers. Where we differ from other players in this market is that we offer a total concept. Not just printing, but equally the conception, design and increasingly important installation of the projects we realise. We do all this in-house, which allows us to be very flexible and short on time. Today, customer-oriented thinking and flexibility are very important assets. Many companies say they do, but the reality is often different.""


Need for additional production capacity

But maintaining that flexibility proved to be not so easy. With the existing machinery, it became increasingly difficult to produce the growing number of orders within the predetermined delivery times. Femke Helon: ""At peak times, we were running almost round the clock to get everything delivered on time. You can do that for a while, but you won't last. We, therefore, desperately needed an additional printer, but an additional problem was that it did not fit within our existing infrastructure. Fortunately, six months ago we found new premises in Lokeren. Large enough to house not only the new machine, but also spacious enough for storage, office, finishing and future growth.""


Full-width printheads

Now just find the right printer and all the puzzle pieces will fall into place. That the choice finally fell on the Inca Onset S20i has several reasons, according to Gerd Mouton. ""Firstly, because we can handle both rigid material (up to 5cm thick) and flexible material. The print bed's powerful vacuum has 15 vacuum zones, allowing not only flexible substrates but also more difficult materials, such as corrugated cardboard, to lie perfectly smooth and prevent colour differences when printing. A second reason is the printing technology used. This is because the Onset has printheads across the entire print width. So it is not the printhead, but the platform that moves. You don't need to be an Einstein to understand that this setup makes the printheads much less subject to vibration, which in turn has a favourable impact on lifetime, stability and image quality. Indeed, the entire image is built up in a number of passes, making banding, for example, non-existent.""


Great coverage of Pantone colours

And then there is the ink story. On this, Wouter Mouton says the following: ""We opted for a 6-colour configuration with Fujifilm UV jet inks that allows us to print a multitude of materials and guarantees brilliant colours and a high-gloss finish. With UV jet inks, we can not only realise almost all Pantone colours, but also print within the ISO-12647 standard. For example, print jobs from our Inca Onset S20i printer perfectly match commercial print jobs of our customers. A clear added value for the graphics companies we work for. The ability to apply additional gloss both locally and across the entire image also offers interesting opportunities.