CPI Graphics launches new customer experience centre

HP Scitex LX 800 debuts at CPI Open House’s customer centre. Richard Rasmussen went along to find out more.

The new customer experience centre was officially opened in Melbourne this week to 70 guests by CPI’s David Booth, general manager graphics and Bernard Cassell, MD CPI Group, along with Bruce Caldwell, sales and marketing manager, HP Scitex – South Pacific Region also on hand.

“The new purpose-built customer experience centre will provide a great venue for customer demonstrations and provide training of both the customer’s operators and our staff,” said Booth.

The star of the show was the new HP Scitex LX 800 printer, which received its first ever showing in the region. What is particularly special about this 3.2 metre-wide printer is the use of water-based HP Latex inks. The result is that it produces vibrant colour, at 1200 x 1200 DPI; it’s odourless, environmentally friendly and dry as it comes of the machine. Also impressive is the fact that HP provides a three-year permanence guarantee for un-laminated media and five years for laminated.

Pictured: (l-r) Bruce Caldwell, Bernard Cassell and David Booth.

According to Booth, the market for the machine lies mainly with screen printers and large format print service providers.  Its applications both indoor and outdoor are wide and varied. Once application was being shown on a new car in the showroom, ably applied by the Active Display Group.  Also discussed were the real estate boards that have used this media, largely replacing the old screen-printed tin boards. 

This machine can also produce variable data - on this media that has a lot of applications; one cited by Booth was multi site retail outlets, changing store names and locations for each poster or banner, others may include different feature products or pricing. 

The media used was supplied by Mactac, whose representatives were also on hand to discuss numerous other applications such as point-of purchase posters, light boxes, soft signage, wall coverings, vehicles wraps and general signage. One out-of-the-square potential application was advertising on rooftops of houses on flight paths.   

Other wide format machines, shown in production include the HP Scitex FB 6100, shown printing UV colour on corflute, and capable of printing on other rigid and flexible media, and the XP 2750, a 3.2 metre UV machine printing banners. Other machines of differing sizes targeted at a wide range of market segments, were also in production.