Exploring the Significance of Wide-Format Innovation

There’s often a misconception that innovation means disruption. However, that’s far from the truth. In today’s wide-format landscape, innovation is less about flashy disruption and more about solving real production problems. During a recent Wide-Format Impressions webinar sponsored by Canon U.S.A., John Ingraham, senior specialist at Canon U.S.A, made the case that innovation in wide-format is far from over. In fact, he argued that the latest wave of advances is helping PSPs improve print quality, reduce waste, simplify operation, and protect profitability at a time when labor and turnaround pressures continue to intensify.

If you weren’t able to attend the webinar, here are some key insights from the presentation.

Innovation in wide-format is shifting from novelty to practical profitability

A central theme of the webinar was that innovation in wide-format is no longer just about introducing a brand-new category of equipment. Instead, manufacturers are refining the technologies that matter most to print service providers: productivity, uptime, labor efficiency, and application flexibility.

Ingraham framed the current moment as one where quality alone is not enough.

“I really think that this, this whole idea of ease of use, uh, the ability to work unattended printing is really where things are going,” Ingraham said.

He also emphasized that the market still has room for meaningful development, especially in hybrid printing.

“We’re not done yet. Especially when it comes to hybrid printing, we’re definitely not done and we’re not alone in that.”

That matters because, as he noted later in the webinar, innovation is increasingly tied to a PSP’s ability to stay competitive against faster, more automated platforms that can produce work at lower cost.

UVgel Technology Continues to Stand Out  

Ingraham started off with a little background. Canon unveiled UVgel back in 2017 Ingraham explained, describing it as truly a revolutionary technology.

“It allowed for us to have a new approach to large-format printing, and it was able to combine sort of the best of both worlds. We have the ability to have that color vibrancy, that ability to have nice, sharp images that you're familiar with, with digital inks, but also having that ability to use all those benefits of UV curing, which is durable and instantly dries,” Ingraham said.

Key Benefits of UVgel

Here are just some things of note Ingraham highlighted about Canon’s UV gel ink

•  The Canon UV gel ink is non evaporative: “Which means a hundred percent of the ink that's jetted stays on the media. That lowers the amount of ink consumption required without having to give up to evaporation from heating and drying,” Ingraham said.
• It dries upon curing and produces minimal docking
• It achieves a large color gamut with only CMYK colors: “Which eliminates the need to have light colors as well as extra spot colors,” Ingraham says.
• The process is extremely streamlined: “The prints are instantly durable with no need to have optimizers or overcoats. And depending on the application, you don't need any kind of lamination as well,” Ingraham said.

Another key benefit Ingraham pointed out is FLXfinish+ technology

“FLXfinish+ takes advantage of the unique properties of the ink. It enables the ability to work with Gloss, have a gloss finish, have a matte finish, or the ability to do matte and gloss at the same time,” Ingraham said. “This change in finish is achieved without using any kind of varnish or additional ink channels and really allows customers to come up with some very high margin products they could not produce with traditional printing.”

Customer feedback is driving major advancements in white ink, printheads, and maintenance

One of the more notable points in the webinar was how often Ingraham returned to customer input as a driver of product development. He said Canon heard clearly that white ink often brings maintenance headaches and that shops want speed and simplicity without service-related downtime.

On white ink specifically, he explained that Canon designed its UVgel white to address long-standing operator frustrations.

“We wanted to make sure that we could have something that had high opacity and also would have a low amount of maintenance,” he said.

Printhead development followed a similar path. Ingraham walked attendees through Canon’s progression from earlier single-channel heads to the newer dual-head 850 series used in the Colorado XL. That transition increased nozzle count dramatically, simplified the printer architecture, and, just as importantly, changed the service model.

“It can be replaced by a key maintenance operator, which was huge,” Ingraham said. “Because customers don't want to be down, and especially if you're talking about a large hybrid system. They're moving at a very fast pace, and Canon listened to the needs of customers and developed this printhead accordingly.”

That matters for PSPs facing tight deadlines and limited labor. Reducing dependence on service calls can shorten downtime and make production environments more resilient.

Hybrid printing requires much more than scaling up a roll-to-roll platform

A key message from the webinar was that moving into hybrid printing is not as simple as enlarging an existing roll-fed engine. Ingraham was clear that handling both rigid and roll media at high speed requires a complete rethinking of transport, alignment, and curing.

He underscored that point directly:

“It’s not just the Colorado M that’s bigger,  we knew that to be able to work with rigid materials as well as roll-to-roll materials, we're going to have to develop a, a whole set of new technologies to be able to produce a better product that could actually meet the specific needs of people that are printing on both rigid as well as a roll to roll materials,” he said.

So, when Canon developed its Colorado XL series, it also developed new systems such as TRIdrive media transport and Dynamic Motion Control to address the real challenges of hybrid production, including skew, wrinkling, media movement variation, and accurate dot placement across a wide print width – best for those looking to use the Colorado XL to print soft signage.

Ingraham described Dynamic Motion Control as a major advance in automated alignment

“It’s quite an amazing system,” he said.

That capability is important because hybrid users are often producing higher-value rigid graphics where a misprint carries a bigger cost penalty than a roll-fed job. For those applications, automation is not just a convenience. It is a quality and waste-reduction tool.

The next phase of wide-format innovation will center on speed, automation, and operator independence

When the discussion widened beyond Canon’s own technology, Ingraham pointed to a broader market reality: The industry is under pressure to produce more with fewer skilled operators. That is shaping where manufacturers invest and what PSPs should prioritize when evaluating new equipment.

“It is getting harder and harder and harder to find qualified operators.  So, innovation is necessary for these printers to be able to be easily used because the turnover is so high,” Ingraham said.

That reality is pushing innovation toward systems that are easier to load, easier to maintain, more capable of unattended production, and less dependent on highly specialized labor. Ingraham argued that this trend extends across print, not just wide-format, and will continue to shape equipment design.

At the same time, he made clear that shops cannot afford to fall behind simply because their current devices still function.

“You got to stay in pace with what’s going on. A person who’s working with an older solvent printer is not going to be able to compete with a newer UV system or a newer latex system. It’s just, it's not going to be profitable for them,” Ingraham said.

For those interested the full webinar is available for viewing here.