The tipping point for commercial print to move to inkjet has been reached Screen Europe senior VP sales Bui Burke told the Inkjet Forum last week. Screen is well placed to know. It has more than 200 engines operating in the transactional and book printing markets and a similar number of presses producing inkjet printed labels.
That success was due to the technology meeting the expectations of users for productivity, reliability and quality. Once inkjet was able to print 2pt text it “could do what people needed” he told audiences in Leeds, Leicester and Swindon.
Inkjet is now in a similar position for commercial print. It is able to deliver around 12,500 B2 sheets on the floor an hour, with energy costs, servicing costs and consumable costs in line or more competitive than those for offset or other digital presses.
Nor is inkjet restricted as a technology to short runs. In labels, printers are running 10,000 or 20,000 linear metres as well as highly profitable shorter runs he explained.
The companies in inkjet printing, HP, Kodak, Canon as well as Screen, are reducing the running costs and improving performance adding to impetus towards a tipping point. “Drying systems,” Burke points out, “have improved markedly.” Ink costs will fall as volumes increase, but should not be a barrier to adoption he explains.
It is not just in roll fed, continuous feed or web fed (according to preference) where inkjet has leaped forwards. Fujifilm’s inkjet product manager Mark Stephenson pointed to the emotional impact of print when it is of high quality and relevant to the reader. Fujifilm has continually developed the B2 Jetpress so it is now faster, more automated and can address a wider range of applications than before, either at the highest quality or at a leading edge of productivity for a digital sheetfed press.
The press has been used in high end photographic books where the technology’s wider gamut delivers impact and its ability to hold shadow detail as well as in the highlights, provides the impact that many photographers cannot get from litho. A new range of food safe inks is taking Jetpress into carton printing.
Stephenson was joined by Kyocera commercial business development head Marc Zentjens in extolling the benefits of inkjet for sheetfed printing, when discussing the attributes of the Kyocera Taskalfa Pro 150000C SRA3 press. “I really believe we can bring something new to the market,” he says. “The only thing that offset suppliers are working on is efficiency.” Quality and versatility are a given, leading manufacturers to fight for the smallest gains in productivity. This makes offset a mature technology. Likewise there is little difference in toner presses. Inkjet, however, is on the lower reaches of the technology curve and offers benefits in terms of speed, digital only operation, stability and more. “There are almost zero operator interventions,” he says, “because there are very few moving parts.”
The sessions were completed with question and answer sessions which went into greater depth on the technology, the applications, cost and readiness for market.
Part of that depends on linking print to finishing, which was addressed by Tecnau’s EMEA sales director Harm Jan Hulleman, who ran through the finishing and materials handling technologies that are needed to make inkjet printing into a full end to end solution. That can included automatic splicing and reel changing after printing as well as before. The big question was one of inline or offline finishing. The answer to that he explains is “It depends”. What is clear however, is that the inkjet train is running, is building a head of steam, and is pretty much unstoppable. The question then is about when to get on.
