Printer Review: Inca Onset S20

For over 60 years Lake Geneva, WI based Yunker Industries has been providing design, production, and the implementation of custom signage and décor programs for retailers and brands in the grocery, c-store, specialty and big-box retail categories. Yunker was looking to expand and position its business in a way that would enable it to respond better—and faster—to market changes.

"We first saw the printer in Chicago during Print 09. It was impressive," said said Mark Huckstorf, vice president of operations, Yunker Industries. "Having had the Turbo for a couple of years, we understood the Inca mechanics. Seeing the spot color and high gloss test files demonstrated at the show confirmed that the Inca Onset S20 was definitely an improvement over the Turbo."

After researching other printers in the market from Durst and EFI, Yunker purchased the Inca Onset S20 and it was installed in January 2010. "The speed was the first thing we noticed. The variable gloss feature was a very interesting and pretty unique feature. We also knew about its reliability, both from our own experience, as well as from talking with others in the industry. Inca Digital has proven itself to build pretty tough printers. There’s not a lot of down time," said Huckstorf.

According to Huckstorf, each day they look for ways to be more competitive in the market and the options the Inca Onset S20 offered gave them the ability to increase their cost and service advantage.

Now, more than ever, timelines have been compressed and the ability to respond quickly based on higher volumes is crucial. "The Inca Onset S20 has exceeded our expectations. Of course, increased speeds have resulted in more competitive costs to our clients and have also given us the option to run higher volume work that typically would have be allocated to our screen presses," said Huckstorf. "Our overall quality compliance has substantially increased based on this printer’s capabilities, resulting in better bottom-line performance for us and for our clients. We’ve always been known for our quality — the Inca Onset S20 has raised the bar for us."

Yunker plans to use the new printer for every project from small 2x2-inch shelf cards ganged up to full 63x123-inch graphic panels. Currently, though, they are looking at adding variable data. "Inca has an option, which may help with this," said Huckstorf. "We know of people who are looking for large-format customized work, where images are variable, We know it can be done, but we’re doing a bit more research to do it correctly."

Yunker's primary customer base includes retailers and brands in the retail market. They announced the addition of the Inca Onset S20 in March during GlobalShop, our industry’s largest and primary tradeshow to the retail market, and have been pleased with the response from attendees. "Because of its flexibility, the Inca Onset S20 has given us the ability to approach retailers we would not have approached in the past, and this was proven to us at the show," said Huckstorf. "The gloss level option and color gamut allows us to hit difficult brand colors and skin tones that are important to apparel, fashion, food and department store retailers, some of which we have added since the show."

Additionally, Yunker has also done industry targeted web-based mailings announcing the addition of the Inca Onset S20 and its features to its customers.

"While it does a lot of things well, reliability is very important. Our experience to date with the Inca Turbo and Inca Onset S20 has been very good. The support from Inca Digital and Fujifilm Sericol is great — better than that from others. They are well trained, know their equipment, and take care of it," said Huckstorf.