The S-Series is a family of seven UV-LED printers, which expand on the manufacturer’s VersaUV core technology, first made available in 2009.
Roland has been “quietly introducing” the S-Series to its customers over the past six months ahead of its official launch at this week's Fespa.
The four flatbeds range in price from £48,000 (€55,000) for the 0.8mx2m LEC-330S-F200 model, to £79,000 (€90,000) for the 1.6x3.8m LEJ-640S-F400.
Prices for the hybrids start at £52,000 (€60,000) for the 760mm-wide LEC-330S-B150 model, through to £71,500 (€82,000) for the LEJ-640S-B150 up to £77,000 (€88,000) for the 1.6x2.5m LEJ-640S-B250 1.6m-wide machines.
Paul Willems, EMEA head of business development and product management, said: "Signage is still the most important of our core markets and we focus a lot of our technological developments here.
"As a market it is competetive, very price sensitive and difficult for our customers to operate within – so we have worked to provide the S-Series as a range that can give them an edge in this large, important market.
"The series is a family providing a range of solutions among its seven iterations. They are big, bulky products that can print on any kind of substrate with our inks. They are a Swiss army knife when it comes to digitally printed signage."
The S-Series print in six colours as standard and can be configured in CMYK plus white and gloss, or either dual white or dual gloss. They use Roland’s ECO-UV inks, cured with low-temperature UV lamps allowing for print onto a wide array of both rigid and flexible substrates, including leather, wood, acrylic and paper up to 200mm in height.
Roland described the flatbed and hybrids as two "distinct" products, suited to different types of demands, with the hybrid's vacuum mechanism enabling print on thin or soft materials like shrink wrap or tissue paper. The flatbeds are designed for a range of applications, with the capability to print onto complete products such as control panels and remote controls.
At Fespa, Roland DG previewed a number of further advances to its portfolio, with the addition of direct-to-textile printing coming to the Texart RT-640M dye-sublimator alongside its current transfer paper capabilities .
The incoming EJ-640 Deco will join the EJ-640 eco solvent printer family as a "truly waterbased solution" for printers, according to Willems.
He also announced that the VersaExpress RF-640 will add red, green and orange to its colour options, "creating what we believe is the largest colour gamut on the textile market", according to Willems. Its gamut will now run CMYK, light black and the three new colours.
This will give the machine the ability to create "important corporate colours" hard to achieve purely on standard inks. There is currently no plan to install updates on old RF-640s for existing customers, instead new machines can be bought with the eight-colour configuration.
Willems did not disclose release dates for any of the three previews, but said the new Texart would be priced "sub-€20,000", the Deco would be "mid-€20,000s" and the eight-colour VersaExpress would be "€10-15,000".
Alongside the S-Series machines, Roland DG is showing its VersaUV LEF-300 and LEF-200 UV-LED flatbeds and its TrueVis eco-solvent wide-format printer-cutters on stand 2.2-B20.
