Kodak printheads have popped up in all kinds of integrations in printing, led by the success of Versamark in direct mail. Its heads also print lottery numbers on newspaper presses and books.
Its core technology is continuous inkjet with some of the fastest print speeds on the market, running to 400m/min which is an advantage over single arrays of thermal or piezo printheads. Its inks are water based which can provide an advantage in packaging and now in hygiene products.
The early stages of a project are much like the purchase of a printing press, with samples to test quality, proof of concept and deep discussions about return on investment, multiple spread sheets and so on.
The resulting integrations can breathe new life into existing production lines and open up deeper relationships between brand and the end customer says Kodak.
IIJ is a UK integrator that has been in the game since 2008 when Konica Minolta approached John Corrall about becoming the channel to sell its printheads.
These are piezo heads with different nozzle counts and designed for a range of fluid types including eco solvent and aqueous. There are heads suited to printing large areas rapidly and others optimised for speed or high resolution. Over the years IIJ has carried out integrations using these heads in all parts of the globe, frequently deploying its own inkjet module which includes the ink delivery and drive electronics to brings some standardisation to an implementation, these reducing its cost.
Ricoh is another developer of piezo printheads that are extensively used in large format applications. These are popular being made from stainless steel, offering four grey levels and achieving 600dpi in a single-pass mode. The company uses the single-pass heads in its own continuous feed inkjet presses as well as now deploying them in industrial print applications. The company offers technical support in terms of wave form optimisation, ink testing and integration based on 40 years of development.
Fujifilm Dimatix is one of the best known ink head providers supplying the likes of Inca and Heidelberg as well as driving its own Jetpress machines. It is very capable of high quality single-pass printing. The company also offers a printbar for integration into webfed integrations. It has been more successful in the US than in Europe, hence the decision to acquire Unigraphica which has been a leading inkjet integrator more many years as well as developing its own approaches to digital printing. Unigraphica will provide the local expertise that Fujifilm has lacked in Europe, which Fujifilm will provide Unigraphica with early insight into new developments whether with printheads or with its extensive ink manufacturing capacity.
Kyocera provides piezo inkjet heads to OEMs but is not active in terms of inkjet integrations. It builds its own presses for document printing and has a roadmap for greater involvement in graphic arts. Likewise Epson will supply inkjet heads to specific OEMs, but does not have an active integration operation.
HP will provide its PageWide inkjet technology to integrators, but has relatively few takers. It has showed concepts for mailing lines at Drupa, but without much take up. It uses a thermal technology which is proven both in terms of speed and quality and implemented in applications from direct mail, commercial print and into packaging. The printheads are considered a user replaceable consumable, so priority for these will be given to its own equipment.
Memjet is a head and infrastructure provider that has a high speed, high resolution inkjet head using a waterbased ink. Its relatively low cost has resulted in numerous implementations from OEM label presses to just in time printing on packaging lines for tea or coffee. A second advantage to the technology has been the width of the print head, double that of most heads, making a wide array easy to assemble.
Its relative simplicity makes integration on mailing lines for example straightforward. The biggest drawback to the technology is the cost of the ink and what has been a limited life for the printheads, solved to some extent with the latest DuraJet heads.
Domino is the granddaddy of inkjet integrations, with a long history of providing printbars for mailing and addressing, for coding and marking, for document printing. For these there are options on the inkjet technology that suits the application.
More recently Domino has begun offering its own label and now corrugated packaging presses and has been acquired by Brother so has access to its own printheads which are beginning to be used in Domino products.
Xaar is the leading UK producer of inkjet heads with high performance piezo print heads that are able to jet high viscosity fluids. This has made Xaar the preferred option for ceramic printing, a position that unbalanced the business necessitating a rethink about what it does best. That is around the characteristics of the inkjet technology and the applications that these service: printing an opaque white or raised varnish using a printbar on a label press say. Its next printhead will have aqueous ink capability opening a host of new applications. At the same time acquisition of FFEI brings in extensive experience of integration and development projects.
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