Brisbane-based Myla Graphics has installed a pair of new OKI ColorPainter wide format printers, supplied by Starleaton.
Myla first invested with ColorPainter three years ago, when it switched from offset printing to wide format, and put in what were then Seiko 64” and 104” printers. The company has just replicated the deal, adding another 64”, the M-64s, and another 104”, the H3-104s, into its factory, from the manufacturer which is now part of OKI.
“We really put a lot of work through our original ColorPainters,” said Myla owner Ken Thorne, a print industry veteran of thirty years’ experience, “They were the only printers we could find that could take the workload, produce excellent colour and run reliably at fast speed.
“When it came time to replace them, we knew we would stick with ColorPainters. I was at the Brisbane Visual Impact exhibition in April and saw the OKI ColorPainters on the Starleaton stand. We did the deal for both a 64” and 104” model there and then.”
Since his first ColorPainters, OKI has introduced a generation change in the inks, now designated eco-solvent SX inks. The company says the new inks offer an increased colour range, lower odour and high outdoor durability (up to three years) without the need to laminate. OKI eco-solvent SX inks are also Gold certified by Greenguard and approved by the Nordic Ecolabel.
“The brilliance of the colours is excellent,” says Thorne, “Nothing I have seen can come close to them on vinyls, banners, polyesters, polypropylenes. We use the seven-colour inkset which is CMYK + light cyan, light magenta and a special gray for excellent monotones and smoother gradations in colour.”
Myla Graphics is a trade-only printer. Sign installers, national display companies and leading retail brands use Myla for their signage production destined for Australia’s eastern seaboard from Port Douglas in the north down as far as Ballina, NSW and beyond – a distance of approximately 2,000 km.
“We don’t install the signage ourselves,” says Thorne, “Our job is to get the signage printed at top quality and on-time. Our customers are all sign tradies large and small. If a major retailer rolls out a new campaign, we will have thousands of them ready for the installers to do their work. If a single sign is vandalised or a window broken, retailers such as Aldi or Woolworths want it replaced immediately – we will work all night if needed.”
Ben Eaton, CEO of Starleaton, an OKI ColorPainter reseller and supplier of Myla Graphics' two machines, says: "We are delighted to have retained Ken's business with the two new ColorPainters and supply of the Eco SX inks.
“Pure trade printers like Myla Graphics require high service levels because they can be subject to demanding deadlines. Its equipment needs to be bullet-proof and the OKI ColorPainters fit that bill - they have earned a reputation as the most reliable high production workhorses in the sign industry, and deservedly so."