Like a certain lager, inkjet can reach the parts that other print technologies cannot. Inkjet can take printing into the heart of production lines, deliver variable data and personalisation into otherwise static print jobs, can print on all manner of hard to decorate substrates and in many cases customers do not know that it is there.
This is thanks to the way that inkjet works. There are are four key components to inkjet: the printhead itself, which may be piezo, thermal or continuous; the ink supply system; the electronics which trigger the action of the nozzles in the printhead and the software which controls the electronics. Each component can be tweaked and optimised for a particular job. And that is the task of the integrators.
These are companies, some large some small, that are the print equivalent of racing car engineers. Instead of engines, brakes and steering, inkjet integrators combine the separate components into a system that is optimised for a particular task, often as part of a manufacturing line. And like auto engineers, some can be vast businesses, some can be two-man teams. All are highly creative and highly skilled at what they do.
That too can be hugely varied, from adding batch codes and use by dates to packaging on a filling line, to printing ceramic tiles, to producing wallpaper to printing windscreens for the automobile industry.
The potential is equally great. Inkjet is now reaching hygiene products, including baby nappies, raising the vision of selecting personalised nappies by the child’s name, but more likely to apply instructions for new parents about which bit goes to the front, which to the rear. Inkjet does indeed reach the parts other print technologies do not reach.
The first step is to understand which inkjet technology to use and which companies supply the printheads. Kodak is the only producer of continuous feed printheads as Prosper and Ultrastream printheads for these purposes (others will offer coding quality). These can be extremely fast and fire a water based ink which suits some applications.
Kodak also has a long heritage in inkjet integrations extending back to inkjet’s earliest days. That technology became the Scitex Versamark, used by many printers to apply some kind of personalisation on a direct mail piece as it was printed on a web press. Some of the Versamark installations in print are still operational, but support for Versamark is being withdrawn. These users need to convert to Prosper or to a different technology entirely.
Multiple Prosper heads were fitted to a 48pp Timson book press to create a digital book line, but this did not achieve the instant success that the British press manufacturer had hoped for and the project fizzled out.
However, Prosper printheads have been integrated into newspaper presses and significantly at The Lettershop Group in Leeds which was the first to combine four Prosper heads to print variable colour images.
More recently Kodak has signed a partnership with GDM which will result in inkjet heads being integrated with lines producing nappies and other personal hygiene products.
“There are 1,500 Prosper heads out there in direct mail and transactional print applications,” says Kodak Eamer solutions manager Rainer Kuessel. “Others are used in publishing print, folding cartons and aseptic cartons for drinks. We can integrate with a folder gluer for corrugated or with a flexo press for non woven materials.” This has given rise to the Sapphire digital flexible packaging press developed with Uteco.
An integration could be printing a QR code for ecommerce applications, perhaps tracking information directly to a box to replace a printed label thus cutting out a process step and reducing the chance of errors while also improving accuracy of information because the latest data can be incorporated.
The GDM collaboration will result in Prosper heads being able to print emojis, logos to indicate comfort levels and QR codes that trigger videos on how to use the product when scanned by a mobile phone. The emphasis for this project is twofold. First the inkjet units must operate at the production speed of the GDM equipment and second the inks used must be suited to skin contact. Kodak scores on both parts.
Other projects will end up using the higher resolution Ultrastream printheads. When this was announced there were discussions with laminate flooring manufacturers among others. Inkjet can produce the different grain effects of different timbers more easily than gravure and it opens up the possibility of printing promotional flooring. To date these have not resulted in product announcements though flooring is starting to shift to inkjet printing.
So too is wallpaper. “The decor market does not need the highest quality, but it does need width,” says Jennifer Pennington, Kodak director of project management and OEM partnerships. It is another market that is appealing to inkjet. It can produce large scale graphics on the one hand and can solve some of the challenges that wallpaper has had on the other. That industry has been beset by high waste levels and by batch to batch consistency because inks are mixed by hand. On the other hand inkjet has not been able to print at the density required for wall coverings.
Having tried inkjet using roll to roll printing, with HP Latex being the popular choice because of the safety of its inks, wallpaper producers are looking at using inkjet in their mainstream production.
It is a sector that has long fascinated John Corrall, founder of IIJ, one of the UK’s leading inkjet integrators. As with high performance auto engineers the UK seems to produce more than its fair share of inkjet integration businesses.
IIJ was formed in 2008 around the potential of Konica Minolta printheads. The Japanese corporate culture is not suited to the adaptability needed for integrations. “We used to call it a retrofit,” says Corrall. “The customer was someone with a production line who wanted to add inkjet printing to it.”
In time IIJ has developed a unit that can be fitted to standalone label and flexible packaging lines and the company has been selling to OEMs rather than simply to end users. This benefits IIJ as costs can be spread over a number of units and it only has one client to deal with and second it benefits the OEM which gets the benefit of a proven inkjet technology without incurring the costs and time needed for a home grown solution. Domino Printing Sciences has also perfected this approach with modules that appear on a growing number of label presses.
IIJ still handles a lot of one-off work for customers around the world, says Corrall, citing China and the US. Its biggest integration project, however, is currently stalled. IIJ was part of a project in Russia to track and trace the origin of dairy products. Each dairy product would carry a code as reassurance to the consumer and which would allow the Russian government to identify the movement of goods in the country. It was to run at 300m/min and included the cameras to scan the barcodes printed by inkjet and the software to link to the government databases.
There is considerable amount of security printing for passports, ID cards and tax stamps and then there is decor. A video on YouTube shows a rig for printing chair legs with the grain for different timbers on behalf of the world’s largest furniture retailer. Robots move the legs into position and remove them to racks after printing and after applies a varnish just a few microns thick that gives a tactile effect. “That was a big integration job,” says Corrall.
He was expecting wallpaper printers to also be integrating inkjet into existing production lines, making use of the roll handling systems, the embossing and debossing, screen and flexo printing already in place and enabling the extra production method on one well depreciated line. “That was what we thought the solution would be when we started the project six years ago,” he says. “Now it seems producers want to scrap existing production lines and go purely digital. What we thought would be one-off integrations is now about supplying a complete standalone production line.” IIJ has the machine, but so too do Kodak and Ricoh, as well as Koenig & Bauer which is working with Agfa for the inks for its Rotajet press, mostly for flooring laminates.
Agfa pops up in another IIJ project where it has replaced the printing unit on a Dotrix press. This is another of those machines that was ahead of its time when launched so had only a limited market at the time, namely wrappers for sugar cubes that might be branded for individual cafes. An IIJ module is marrying with the existing substrate transport to bring the machine to modern standards, including the throughput necessary.
As this was a lockdown project visits to the installation were limited. An engineer was dispatched to take measurements and when the engineer arrived with the new inkjet head module, the customer was surprised and delighted to find that it fitted exactly to the space. It is now in full production, says Corrall.
IIJ’s experience is with the heads and engineering around them. As the lead on many projects it needs to know who to call for specialist requirements such as the ink. Another project Corrall cites required just this expertise. A customer in Portugal wanted to invest in inkjet to produce transfers for T-shirts. The application of the ink was not a problem. However the requirements in terms of washability, stretch and cracking were.
It was a question of selecting suppliers and testing their formulations until the ideal combination of pretreatment, inkjet head, ink and fabric could be found so that the colours stood up to washing and would not easily crack. Then once a workable solution was found, the next step was to approach the ink maker to negotiate the volume required and whether that would prove feasible. “You have to be honest with the ink maker. Any deal has to work for them,” he says.
That fluid might equally be an adhesive for an RFID or NFC application as well decorative ink for printing. “You have to understand inkjet, ink and engineering to find out what it is you need to do to adapt to the application,” says Corrall.
Some of the large companies have this under their own roof. Fujifilm, for example, has substantial ink capability as does Ricoh, though through close relationships with partners. It has developed turnkey solutions for wallpaper, wooden decor as well as for packaging and labels by working directly with the end application. Director industrial print solutions Graham Kennedy says: “That requires substantial process development know how in understanding the relationship and performance of print heads, inks, substrates and finishing.
“We work closely with all major ink vendors to ensure that new ink sets are optimised for performance with our range of printheads. Our ink partner programme is specifically developed for this and to provide confidence to customers that an ink/head combination works well together. Having this ‘on the shelf’ optimised partnership can save months of trial and error testing and reformulating and provide a fast start to new development projects.”
The company’s piezo print heads are a popular choice for large format OEMs in particular and include Fujifilm, which might have selected one of its own printheads for the new Acuity printers. However, different print heads offer different characteristics in terms of droplet size, viscosity of fluids and throughput. Ricoh designs its heads for ease of integration with an open waveform architecture which allows the integration team to tweak droplet size, timings and shape to suit the application and fluid to optimise performance. The print head from one supplier cannot easily be substituted for the print head from another supplier, for example.
Ricoh is also agnostic about the types of companies it works with, whether its own product development OEMs for large format or outside integrators for specialised projects.
“Few OEM’s would require engineering support to develop multi-pass scanning systems, but when the application moves towards single pass, where head stitching for wide printbars, fluid pressure control and more precise drop placement at high speed is required then specialist knowledge can be an advantage,” says Kennedy.
“Ricoh works with a number of integrators that we can introduce to, or bring in to work alongside our customers. As inkjet migrates more towards manufacturing, whether that be auto, aero, solar or energy, industry tends to engage at a research institute level so it is equally important that we have strong relationships in these sectors to educate and help the understanding of what our technology capabilities are.”
The Cambridge cluster underlines the power of research of this kind. Cambridge University has spun off many inkjet businesses, among them Domino, Elmjet and Xaar as well as engineers that have been instrumental in development of inkjet technologies. Government funded research has also played a role.
Some years ago a project looked into production of printed circuit boards using inkjet heads from Xaar, but also involving Xennia and FFEI. Xaar would provide the inkjet head technology, Xennia would develop the conductive ink for the inkjet and FFEI’s laser imaging experience would be used to remove extraneous ink and so create the perfect, evenly printed connection between parts of the board. What exactly happened is buried in a government report somewhere, but shows that there is a close relationship between companies that are geographically close and have their own expertise.
FFEI was largely responsible for the design of an inkjet label press, initially for Nilpeter, then for Edale and now sold as the Canon LabelStream following its acquisition of Edale. The characteristic arched substrate path was created in a factory unit in Hemel Hempstead in a development project known as Shrek.
Several years and several other integration projects along FFEI has this year been acquired by Xaar in one of a number of similar moves across the industry. The ability to take on integration projects is becoming more important it seems.
Xaar has offered a printbar as a standalone system to add a varnish or a white to a label press, whether using conventional flexo or another inkjet technology. The Xaar piezo technology is particularly well suited to high pigment load and high viscosity fluids, opaque white and clear inks included. It means it can achieve a 90% opacity with a single pass of the printhead, or it can lay down enough varnish to produce a tactile effect without slowing the label line, useful for wine and spirits labels. This technology is supplied via the press maker.
“We have two types of customers: OEMs who are well versed in inkjet and do not need data paths or ink systems and know how to integrate it and then there is the User Developer Integrators. They want to transform analogue processes to digital but don’t know how to go about it,” says Xaar chief operating officer Graham Tweedale. The growth of the UDI opportunity led to the acquisition of FFEI’s integration business. “We can offer everything they need, printheads, electronics and data paths and connections with ink suppliers that supply Xaar. If they get a problem, they only have to call Xaar. That is something that you cannot get if someone is just doing the inkjet head integration.”
The heavy laydown characteristics of the Xaar technology means it is in demand too for printing on glass. This can be to replace screen printing around the edge of a windscreen to replace the wires in a windscreen that is heated. The conventional approach will be problematic as the wiring can interfere with radar technology used for self driving cars, says Tweedale. Xaar can also print the antennas for these new types of application. For Tweedale the market is not too far from ceramics which is where Xaar cut its teeth. The requirement from this sector, which is increasing again, is for textured effects which again touches on requirements for printing furniture and flooring.
There are also openings in 3D printing where a spin off Xaar company has been swallowed by Stratasys and where Xaar sees potential for its printheads to use materials that are mechanically stronger than many of the materials that have been produced by inkjet technology to date. “It means that our printheads can do more than just prototyping,” he says. “The narrow viscosity range of most printheads does not allow for this. Our ability provides enormous opportunity for chemists to find applications for inkjet that have previously been impossible. We could build an optical lens for example.”
Xaar’s next printheads will use aqueous inks and will thus open up a new raft of possibilities, not least because the high pigment load means less water is needed and less water means less drying, less energy and ultimately less cost. It is already receiving approaches from companies interested in using this technology which is on schedule for introduction at the end of this year.
This becomes about understanding what the customer, whether an OEM or UDI, wants to achieve, deciding together on a roadmap, and doing a proof of concept, using the appropriate printhead and inks. “We want to make sure that we understand the customers’ ROI for the project. We need also to understand the technical capacity of the customer and where we will need to support them. We reckon that if they were to try an integration on their own it could take them three to five years. We accelerate the process,” says Tweedale.
Xaar is not alone in making an acquisition: so too has Fujifilm, buying Liechtenstein company Unigraphica. Fujifilm has the printhead and the inks, the software and driver capability, but not the expertise in engineering or support for integration projects, in Europe at least. Unigraphica has this in abundance and has worked over the years with many printhead vendors on projects where inkjet is part of production line to standalone machines running reel to reel for document printing.
It has been growing its integration arm over the east five to six years, particularly in the US. The acquisition provides “boots on the ground” in Europe, and from a central location. Recent projects have provided solutions for corrugated, folding carton and direct mail customers.
There is no appetite to swallow the business into Fujifilm, so it will continue as before under the stewardship of Greg Balch, responsible for the Fujifilm Integration Solutions business in North America and Europe. “There will be better access to our technology, but no radical change to the way they do business day to day. Their target is to work with customers that do not want a standalone, off the shelf solution, but need a bespoke solution.”
This may be a printbar, but in a position on a production line that requires engineering expertise as well as the means to integrate this into a more complex production set up. It has applied a printbar to Unigraphica’s Transjet reel handling system to create a mono book press, for example.
The acquisition trail in inkjet has perhaps been most intriguing at Hybrid Software. The company does not have its own printhead technology, but does have a workflow software, does have Rip architecture and powerful processing knowledge and does have a company expert in providing the electronics to drive inkjet printheads. This is Meteor, another of the Cambridge cluster of inkjet related businesses where Clive Ayling is managing director. “We are rarely the lead partner of a project,” he says. “Those businesses will define what they want, yet can screw it up pretty badly. It takes years to build up the necessary expertise in-house, over a number of integrations and growing that experience.” This is perhaps why it makes sense for others to snap up suppliers with that expertise.
The important thing, he says, is that the solution provided works. “There is always pressure to use the latest available technology because it sounds good. But in all cases what you want is reliability rather than the latest, so it can be better to use a five-year-old technology than one that is brand new, even for a new application.”
That chimes with an observation from Ricoh’s Kennedy. “It’s about vanity versus sanity in the development cycle. While on the page, new developments might seem at the leading edge of image quality, speed and performance, the reality is that is unnecessary and overcomplicated 1200dpi developments are at the bleeding edge of cost, resource and time to market. A 600dpi solution can deliver more than acceptable image quality, performance, reliability and cost of ownership all with relatively straight forward development cost and timeframe, so why over complicate the development and add so much risk into the equation?”
“When you spend time listening to the project engineers about what they need,” says Ayling, “it’s not the latest printhead. An integration does not need a printhead that operates at 150m/min if the line itself is only capable of 100m/min.
“In any integration the risk is about wasting money on something that will not work, so the priority is reducing what might go wrong and avoid taking unnecessary risks. It is always possible to upgrade later.”
It is a growing market where the growing capability of inkjet heads and inks coupled with a growing awareness of what is possible and a desire to both reduce waste and shorter time to market for products is leading to demand for these sorts of projects. First generation projects are being replaced with solutions that can provide colour or sharper quality. An example is in the growing use of paper wrap to replace film for subscription magazines.
At first the inkjet head that produce a simple smudgy address on the film was used to print on the vast white expanse of a paper wrap. It looked out of place. But a switch to a colour inkjet head, perhaps a wider head, will enable a promotional message, better branding and an improved experience for the subscriber. A Memjet printhead using a waterbased ink is perfectly placed for this sort of application, just as Memjet heads have been used for addressing direct mail since the high speed, high resolution technology hit the market.
Then there are packaging markets which have been relatively untouched by digital printing, at least at volume. Ayling believes that beverage cans are in this position, where inkjet technology can print at speed, changing the branding on the fly and creating short runs that tie in with events. “Being able to control the printing at the point of manufacture is of high interest,” he says. “This demand integration with the factory’s IT systems and works to a very short lead time.
“That makes this a different market. We are no longer about branding, no longer about printing alone. It’s about decorating, applying what is a tactile surface that is appealing to touch and so more of a finishing process.
“In this case Hybrid Software will lead the project, IC3D provides the software to proof in virtual reality and Meteor is in the background providing components to the integrators working with the end customer.”
This might well end with inkjet actually printing the beer cans for the beer that refreshes those difficult to access parts.
The key is to start the conversations, to understand the impact upstream and down stream from an inkjet integration project. Kodak can participate now in two styles of conversation: those that want speed, where Prosper is the option and those that want the highest quality and will use Ultrastream. And those conversations are taking place with the brands, not the converters who are more inclined to protect the business model they have. It means visits to all manner of trade shows, to engage in conversations with new types of customer, whether that is printing on nappies or beer cans.
MORE FROM THE MAGAZINE
EXPLORE MORE ON INKJET
