Industry News
A heavy week for hardware. Epson put a complete print-and-cut package on the table at just under twenty thousand dollars, Fujifilm landed the first North American sale of its J Press FP790 flexible packaging press, and Durst brought a 328 ft/min label press to its North American debut with automated printhead protection as a headline feature. Add a Japanese shop building a merchandise business on UV-DTF, a PVC-free film range aimed straight at UV and latex wide-format, and a 152-year-old Dutch carton printer closing its doors — and you have a week that touched almost every corner of the shop floor. Below is what moved between August 24 and August 30, 2026 — and, as always, what each item means for the head in your machine.
Wide Format & Signage · August 27
Epson bundles print and cut into the SureColor S7170 Print Cut Edition at $19,995
Epson announced the SureColor S7170 Print Cut Edition, pairing its 64-inch roll-to-roll S7170 solvent printer with a Summa S1 D140 cutter — 54-inch cutting width — and bundled software into a single package. The printer runs a 1.33-inch PrecisionCore Micro TFP printhead with a four-colour UltraChrome GS3 solvent ink set, aimed at signage, stickers, banners, canvas and vehicle wraps. Epson quotes $19,995 MSRP, available through Epson Authorized Professional Imaging resellers from August 2026, and is positioning it squarely at small and growing sign shops buying their first print-and-cut system.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: A single 1.33-inch head doing all four colours is an elegant, economical design — and a single point of failure. On a solvent machine that is likely to sit idle between jobs in a small shop, the thing that kills that head is not print hours, it is downtime: solvent evaporating at the nozzle plate, a capping station that has dried out, a wiper that never gets cleaned. Whatever you buy, budget the capping and wiper consumables from day one and run the machine — or its cleaning cycle — on a schedule, not on demand.
The Epson SureColor S Advanced MicroPiezo TFP head (FA06171 / FA06072) — the solvent head behind the S30600, S50600, S60600 and S80600 series.
Labels & Packaging · August 25
Fujifilm sells the first J Press FP790 in the Americas to Quantum Flex Pack
Fujifilm announced the first North American sale of its J Press FP790 digital flexible packaging press, to Quantum Flex Pack, LLC of Rockford, Illinois — the sixth FP790 sold globally since launch, with installation beginning in August 2026. The press prints at 1200 × 1200 dpi using water-based inks, running CMYK plus two white channels so converters can hit Pantone targets without stocking spot inks. Fujifilm quotes 164 feet per minute at a maximum substrate width of 31 inches, irrespective of how many ink colours are in use.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Two dedicated white channels is the detail worth reading twice. White is the heaviest-pigment, fastest-settling ink in any building, and doubling the channels doubles the recirculation and flush load your heads carry. Water-based on film also means drying behaviour at the nozzle plate is a live variable — different from solvent, different from UV. If you run white on any platform, the lesson transfers: white channels need their own maintenance interval, not the one you use for CMYK.
Industrial UV · August 27
Durst debuts the Tau G3 peak in North America — with printhead protection as a headline feature
Durst announced its next-generation lineup ahead of LOUPE Americas, led by the North American debut of the Tau G3 peak digital label press: 1200 dpi native resolution at up to 328 ft/min, with variable data at full press speed, new Automatic Register Control (ARC) and Material Edge Protection (MEP) — and, notably, automated printhead protection called out among the top-line features. Alongside it Durst showed KJet, an inkjet/flexo hybrid platform at 1200 dpi native in 13", 17" and 20" widths, plus new Workflow Label and Analytics software. The company is marking 90 years in business.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: When a press manufacturer promotes automated printhead protection alongside speed and resolution, that tells you where the real cost of ownership sits on a 328 ft/min UV press. Material Edge Protection matters for the same reason — a head strike from a lifting substrate edge does more damage in a second than a month of hard running. If your own machine has no such system, the manual equivalents are the ones worth being religious about: substrate tension, edge control, and head height set for the material actually loaded rather than the last one.
Ricoh GEN5 (N221414J) — the recirculating UV head class that made high-speed label and industrial inkjet practical.
Textile & Merchandise · August 28
A Japanese print shop builds a merchandise line on Mimaki UV-DTF
A Japanese inkjet specialist founded in 2018 in Kanagawa Prefecture has expanded from indoor signage into both B2B and B2C merchandise on the back of a Mimaki UJV300DTF-75 UV-DTF printer installed in October 2025. The shop is producing branded merchandise, tool identification labels, hospital pictogram signage, interior and window graphics, and decoration for cups and bottles that — per the company — withstand repeated washing, which conventional stickers do not. It is a useful data point on where UV-DTF is actually earning money: durable object decoration, not apparel.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: UV-DTF is a different maintenance animal from water-based DTF. There is no powder and no oven, but there is UV ink sitting in the lines and a white channel doing the heavy lifting under every design, plus adhesive-layer chemistry the head has to jet cleanly. On Mimaki's UCJV/UJV platforms the maintenance head assembly is as much a wear item as the print head itself — know the part number for yours and what a replacement costs before you need one, not after.
Mimaki GEN5 maintenance head U assembly (M022624 / M020236 / M026887) — fits the UCJV300 and UJV300DTF-75 platforms.
Media & Substrates · August 28
Taghleef launches a PVC-free polypropylene graphics film range for UV and latex
Taghleef Industries introduced a PVC-free, chlorine-free polypropylene graphics film range in two parts: printable films engineered for UV inkjet and latex wide-format, and overlamination films in gloss, matte, DL Soft Touch, antiscratch, sandy, leather and canvas finishes. Both are offered with bio-based and recycled feedstock options. The company claims the PP platform delivers up to 35% higher surface yield than standard alternatives alongside dimensional stability and broad pressure-sensitive adhesive compatibility, targeting retail signage, wall graphics, exhibition displays and interior décor.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Swapping vinyl for polypropylene is not a like-for-like media change. PP is lighter, holds a different static charge and has a different surface energy, which affects both ink wetting and how much airborne dust and fibre ends up drifting toward the nozzle plate. Static is the underrated risk here — it pulls debris straight onto the head and can deflect droplets enough to look like a nozzle fault when nothing is actually blocked. Run a test roll, check your ionising bar or static eliminator, and re-profile rather than reusing your vinyl preset.
Business · August 24 & 28
Royal De Vries closes after 152 years as Dutch print assets head to auction
Dutch folding-carton printer Royal De Vries, in business in Sneek since 1874, has permanently closed. Turnover fell from EUR 28.3 million in 2023 to EUR 24.3 million in 2025 with a EUR 3.1 million loss; a 2025 reorganisation caused quality and delivery problems that sent customers elsewhere, and although the issues were fixed, the revenue never came back. The company filed for bankruptcy on 15 June 2026 and was declared bankrupt the following day; the plant closed on 31 July 2026 and all 98 employees lost their jobs. A 2021 KBA Rapida 106 with double coater, plus Bobst Expertfold 110 A2 and Visioncut 106 LER converting equipment, was acquired and resold by a German asset specialist. Separately, machinery from another major Dutch print producer, ADC Nederland, was offered across three bankruptcy auctions announced on 28 August.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Distress in Europe means good equipment coming onto the used market at attractive numbers — and that is where buyers get caught. On offset, an auction bargain is mostly a mechanical question. On any digital or inkjet line, the heads are a consumable with hours on them, and a press that has sat unpowered and unflushed for weeks between closure and auction may need a full set. Before you bid on digital kit, ask for nozzle checks, ask how long it has been idle, and price a complete head set into your offer. That number is often the difference between a bargain and a project.
Whatever equipment you run — or are thinking about running next — the printhead is the heart of it. If you ever need a replacement head or a hard-to-find component, browse our full range of printheads and printer spare parts and accessories — our team is always happy to help you find the right fit for your machine.
See you next week with more industry news.
— The Allprintheads Team
Sources: WhatTheyThink (August 24–28, 2026).
