The B2 UV flatbed printer market has long been a battleground for production volume, precision, and ink versatility. Manufacturers targeting the industrial sector — those printing on plastics, metals, glass, ceramics, leather, and fabric at scale — have demanded more than what entry-level UV flatbeds can offer. They need consistent throughput measured in square metres per hour, engineering-grade mechanical precision, ink systems that genuinely stick to challenging substrates, and the ability to integrate with automated production lines. Until now, few UV flatbed manufacturers have addressed all four demands in a single machine.

Roland DG is stepping directly into that gap with the VersaOBJECT IO-300. Positioned above the MO-240 and the entire LEF2 series in Roland's UV flatbed portfolio, the IO-300 is the brand's highest-performance B2 flatbed printer — engineered specifically for the industrial market. With a new staggered print head array, a cast iron chassis, ball screw drive mechanism, dual UV-LED lamps, and two dedicated ink families for rigid and flexible substrates, the IO-300 brings industrial-grade architecture to a market segment that has long accepted compromise.

Official announcement is scheduled for 1 September 2026, with sales commencing 24 September 2026. The IO-300 enters the market as Roland's most capable B2 UV flatbed, and a genuinely competitive alternative to the Mimaki UJF-7151Plus II in industrial production environments.

1Why the IO-300 Is Different

Roland's VersaOBJECT lineup has always served the UV flatbed segment, but the IO-300 marks a deliberate shift toward industrial-grade specifications. This is not a sign-shop flatbed with upgraded marketing language — the IO-300 is a machine engineered from the ground up for high-cycle production environments where downtime is expensive, print quality consistency is non-negotiable, and substrate versatility is a commercial requirement.

The headline specification that sets the IO-300 apart from its closest competitor — the Mimaki UJF-7151Plus II — is print speed. In CMYK standard mode, the IO-300 delivers 3.5 m²/h, which Roland benchmarks at 159% faster than the UJF-7151Plus II. Add white ink to the mix and the IO-300 holds 3.2 m²/h (CMYK+White standard), 145% faster than the equivalent Mimaki configuration. When running double CMYK mode for maximum colour density, throughput reaches 4.3 m²/h. Draft mode pushes the machine to a remarkable 19.5 m²/h for proofing, layout checks, and high-volume single-pass work.

Print area is another area where the IO-300 deliberately outpaces the competition. The W770 × D515mm (30 × 20 in.) print area is 10% larger than that of the Mimaki UJF-7151 — and critically, it covers the full print area of every model in the LEF2-200 series. This means customers upgrading from a LEF2-200 will find all their existing jigs and fixtures compatible without modification.

2Key Technical Features

The IO-300 introduces several mechanical innovations that distinguish it from previous Roland UV flatbeds. These are not incremental improvements — they represent a substantive rethink of how a B2 flatbed should be engineered for sustained industrial production.

Staggered Print Head Array

At the heart of the IO-300 is a new staggered print head architecture using two large print heads arranged in a staggered layout, paired with a powerful 6-inch UV-LED lamp. The staggered configuration allows each head to work in tandem with the other, eliminating the speed bottleneck that typically occurs when a single head must cover the full print width in multiple passes. This architecture is what enables the 3.5 m²/h CMYK standard throughput — a figure that previous B2 Roland flatbeds could not achieve.

• New Staggered Dual-Head Configuration Two large print heads in a staggered layout work simultaneously, dramatically increasing effective nozzle coverage per pass. Combined with the new 6-inch high-output UV-LED lamp, this configuration delivers both throughput and curing performance that single-head flatbeds cannot match.
• Cast Iron Chassis for Structural Rigidity The IO-300 uses a cast iron chassis — the same approach used in precision machine tools — to provide dimensional stability across all operating conditions. This eliminates the thermal expansion and mechanical flex that cause print quality degradation in extended production runs. At 475 kg, this machine is built to stay put.
• Ball Screw Drive Mechanism The carriage and platen are driven by a ball screw mechanism rather than the belt-and-pulley systems found in most UV flatbeds. Ball screw drives provide superior positioning accuracy, eliminate backlash, and deliver consistent motion quality at high speeds. This is the same drive technology used in CNC machining centres and high-precision optical equipment.
• Positioning Guide Pins For jig-based mass production workflows, the IO-300 includes positioning guide pins that lock jigs to the platen in a fixed, repeatable position. This ensures every item in a batch is printed with identical registration, removing operator variability from the production process.
• Automatic Cloth Wiper System The IO-300 uses a cloth wiper for automatic head maintenance — a system that provides superior nozzle cleaning versus traditional rubber wipers. The cloth wiper removes residual ink and cured fragments without damaging nozzle plates, maintaining print quality consistency across extended production shifts.
• Distance Mode — 10mm Print Gap A dedicated Distance Mode allows the IO-300 to print with a 10mm gap between the print head and the substrate surface. This enables printing on curved, irregular, and textured objects — including golf balls, promotional merchandise, and non-flat branded items — that would otherwise require dedicated cylindrical or vacuum printing equipment.
• Contact Height Sensor (Standard) + Laser Sensor (Optional) A contact-type height sensor is included as standard, automatically measuring substrate height and adjusting the platen to the correct print gap. An optional non-contact laser sensor is available for delicate substrates where physical contact during measurement is undesirable — such as soft-surface materials, precision-machined metal parts, or fragile promotional items.

Automation Integration via SC4 Commands

For customers integrating the IO-300 into automated production lines, Roland has included SC4 command support for PLC and robot arm integration. SC4 is a standardised command language for industrial automation equipment, allowing the IO-300 to receive print start/stop signals, platen position commands, and status queries from upstream and downstream automation hardware. This makes it straightforward to incorporate the IO-300 into a robotic pick-and-place cell or conveyor-based production system without custom serial interface development.

Automatic Maintenance Scheduling

The IO-300 includes an automatic maintenance scheduler that operators can program in the same way as a smartphone alarm. Setting a daily start-up time causes the machine to automatically run its head warming, nozzle check, and flush cycles so that it is ready to print immediately when the operator arrives. For high-cycle industrial environments where every minute of production time has measurable value, eliminating manual warm-up steps translates directly to higher daily output.

3Ink System — EUV-HP and EUV-A7

The IO-300 supports two distinct UV ink families that address fundamentally different substrate classes. Rather than asking one ink formulation to handle everything from rigid aluminium panels to flexible leather goods — always a compromise — Roland has engineered separate ink series optimised for their specific application environments. See our EUV-HP and EUV-A7 ink guide for a detailed breakdown of which ink is right for your substrates.

The practical implication of this dual-ink approach is significant. A product decorator printing on both rigid promotional items (pens, phone cases, drinkware) and soft goods (leather wallets, tote bags, fabric patches) can serve both substrate families from a single machine by switching ink configurations — without compromising the adhesion or durability characteristics that each material demands.

750ml Cartridge Format — Clean, No-Spill Handling

Both EUV-HP and EUV-A7 inks are supplied in 750ml cartridge format — a key operational advantage over competing systems that use open-bottle or bulk-bag filling. Cartridge-type ink handling eliminates spill risk during ink changes, prevents exposure to UV light degradation during the change process, and ensures accurate ink volume tracking for consumable cost management. Each cartridge has a 12-month shelf life, providing flexibility for operations that do not consume ink at the same rate across all channels.

The eight ink slots support flexible channel allocation. The double-white (Wh×2) configurations enable higher white ink density in a single pass — critical for white under-printing on dark substrates, where opacity is a print quality requirement. White ink density is specified to match the MO-240, Roland's premium UV flatbed, ensuring that IO-300 customers are not sacrificing opacity to achieve higher throughput. The dual-gloss configuration (Gl×2) is designed for heavy gloss embossing applications where multiple clear layers are applied in sequence.

4Print Quality and Colour Stability

Industrial UV flatbed printing demands more than raw speed. In mass production environments — particularly product decoration for retail merchandise, promotional goods, and branded industrial components — colour consistency across batches and over time is a commercial quality requirement. A product that ships with a different shade of corporate blue in week two compared to week one creates real problems for clients and supply chain managers alike.

Colour Stability — ΔE00 ≤2 Within 30 Minutes

UV-cured ink undergoes a post-curing colour shift in the minutes immediately after printing — a phenomenon known as colour drift. On lower-specification machines this drift can be significant enough to create visible differences between the first and last items in a production batch. The IO-300 specifies a ΔE00 (Delta E 2000) of ≤2 within 30 minutes of printing — a tight tolerance that means colour-matched items printed across a single shift will remain visually consistent to the standard required for retail merchandise and branded product decoration.

White Ink Density

White ink performance is one of the most practically important specifications in UV flatbed printing for product decoration. Insufficient white opacity means that substrate colour bleeds through the white layer, degrading both white purity and the colours printed on top of it. Roland has engineered the IO-300's white ink density to match that of the MO-240 — Roland's flagship UV flatbed printer — ensuring that IO-300 users have access to the same level of white coverage regardless of throughput mode.

Gloss Embossing — Up to 1mm Thick

The IO-300 supports gloss embossing through layered clear ink application, building up textured surfaces up to 1mm in thickness across 10 layers. This capability opens up a significant range of premium product decoration applications: raised logo printing on corporate gifts, tactile texture effects on packaging prototypes, spot gloss on award items, and Braille-style tactile text on promotional materials. The dual-gloss ink configuration (Gl×2) maximises throughput for embossing-intensive production runs by doubling the clear ink availability per print pass.

5Full Specifications

The following table provides the complete technical specifications for the Roland VersaOBJECT IO-300 as announced by Roland DG.

6Industrial Applications

The IO-300 has been designed to serve a specific tier of customer: businesses that print on objects at production scale, where speed, consistency, and substrate versatility are daily operational requirements rather than occasional nice-to-haves. The combination of EUV-HP and EUV-A7 inks, the Object Decoration Module, the positioning guide pins, and SC4 automation compatibility collectively address the workflow needs of the following application segments.

• Promotional Merchandise and Corporate Gifting Pens, phone cases, USB drives, tumblers, drink bottles, keyrings, and desk accessories represent the core volume market for B2 UV flatbed printing. The IO-300's jig-based Object Decoration Module, guide pins, and 3.5 m²/h throughput make it practical to run hundreds of branded items per hour with consistent colour and registration accuracy. White ink density matching the MO-240 means dark-coloured substrates receive properly opaque underlayers.
• Industrial Component Marking and Decoration Manufacturers who need to print serial numbers, safety markings, brand identifiers, or instructional graphics directly onto metal, plastic, or ceramic components will find the EUV-HP ink's adhesion performance on rigid substrates directly relevant. Ball screw precision and positioning guide pins ensure accurate placement on machined or injection-moulded parts where registration tolerance is tight.
• Fashion Accessories and Leather Goods EUV-A7 ink is engineered specifically for flexible substrates including leather, faux leather, and fabric. For accessory brands and OEM manufacturers printing personalised or batch-branded wallets, belts, bags, and footwear components, the IO-300 with EUV-A7 provides the flexibility and adhesion that rigid UV inks cannot deliver on soft materials.
• Awards, Trophies, and Recognition Products Crystal, glass, acrylic, and coated metal awards require high white opacity for full-colour printing, combined with gloss embossing capability for premium tactile finishes. The IO-300's dual-white slot configuration, 1mm emboss capability, and EUV-HP adhesion on glass and acrylic make it a strong production platform for the awards and personalisation industry.
• Cylindrical Object Decoration With the optional OA-RA-240 rotary axis accessory, the IO-300 can print on cylindrical objects up to 115mm in diameter — including drink bottles, tubes, pens, and cylindrical packaging. Distance Mode (10mm print gap) extends this further to irregular curved surfaces such as golf balls and promotional sports equipment that cannot be accommodated on a flat jig.
• Packaging Prototyping and Short-Run Packaging B2 print area (770 × 515mm) is large enough to prototype or produce short-run flatpack carton blanks, rigid packaging components, and point-of-sale display elements. EUV-HP's performance on coated substrates means packaging printers can produce fully decorated prototypes and short-run production pieces without outsourcing to offset or digital sheet-fed presses.
• PSPs Expanding into Manufacturing Services Print service providers looking to offer product decoration services as a revenue diversification strategy will find the IO-300's combination of production throughput, industrial ink chemistry, and automation integration (SC4 commands) provides a credible manufacturing-grade platform. The VersaWorks 7 RIP and Object Decoration Module lower the barriers to setting up repeat-production workflows compared to purely industrial UV systems that require custom software integration.

7Availability and Pricing

The Roland VersaOBJECT IO-300 follows a structured global release schedule. Production has already commenced, and the machine will be formally announced at Roland DG's global media events in September 2026.

• June 17, 2026
  Production Starts
  Manufacturing of the initial production run commences at Roland DG's facility.
• June 2026
  First Shipments
  Initial units begin shipping to authorised Roland DG dealer channels ahead of the official announcement.
• September 1, 2026
  Official Announcement
  Roland DG officially launches the VersaOBJECT IO-300 to the global market. Full product information and marketing materials released.
• September 24, 2026
  Sales Commence
  Orders begin processing through Roland DG's authorised dealer network globally. Contact DPI Technology to register your interest ahead of the sales start date.

The IO-300 is a significant capital investment — one that is positioned above the MO-240 and the entire LEF2 series in Roland's lineup. It is intended for customers who need production-grade throughput, industrial ink chemistry, and the engineering rigour to back both. If you are evaluating UV flatbeds at this tier — whether comparing against the Mimaki UJF-7151Plus II or looking to step up from a Roland LEF2-200 series machine — the IO-300 warrants serious consideration as Roland's most capable B2 UV flatbed platform.