There are two distinct areas to muse. Firstly, the well-developed arenas in wide-format and narrow-web label printing where inkjet continues to prove a worthy contender to screen and flexo. Secondly, inkjet is making inroads into general production printing and at Drupa 2008 it sounded a war cry against offset.
In wide-format, EFI Vutek led the charge against screen with the DS Series. Coming hot on the heels of Inca Digital’s 2007 launch of the Onset UV flatbed, the DS pips the former’s speed while shipping at around half the price. EFI Vutek vice-president of marketing Chuck Dourlet said: We believe we have pushed the economics of digital into screen like no other.
Driving change
However, few would be surprised by these developments, or the host of other wide- and superwide-format inkjet machines at the show. Nor would many be surprised at how far inkjet has pushed into the narrow-web label sector. The benefits are obvious. Inkjet opens the door to added-value short-run labels previously out of the budget of anyone but the most high-end packaging buyers.
Narrow-web presses, such as Nilpeter’s Caslon, offer a host of inline extras, such as single-pass foiling, embossing or laminating. The Danish manufacturer scored with a sale of the Caslon – which hinges on technology from UK companies Xaar and FFEI – to an unnamed Brazilian printer.
EFI’s Jetrion 4000 machine, also equipped with Xaar’s 1001 printheads, is another full-colour challenger to flexo- or toner-printed labels that gained a lot of buzz in the halls of the Messe. Yet inkjet is also successfully complementing other processes. Label press manufacturers showed how their machines could run inline after flexo kit to offer variably printed label runs.
Variable data is a key driver. One of the most surprising pieces of show news was actually announced at the Messe Düsseldorf a month before Drupa at the Interpack packaging exhibition. Heidelberg used Drupa to reveal its plans for the packaging market with kit such as the immense XL 162. But four years after abandoning digital, when it famously sold Nexpress to Kodak for $1, the German giant has quietly re-entered the market with its Linoprint overprinting device. The high-resolution machine, not on show at Drupa, will be aimed at overprinting applications such as 2D barcodes for pharmaceutical packs. When quizzed, the manufacturer’s head of sales Jürgen Rautert said the move shouldn’t be taken as a re-entry into digital commercial print, but nor did he rule it out for the future.
Creating a splash
However, for all-out headline-grabbing announcements, nothing created quite so much chatter as industrial inkjet. HP stole a march on rivals by announcing the HP Inkjet Web Press at its Israel open house in March. The 762mm-wide machine churns through 122m per minute, working out at 2,600 A4 pages per minute, making it as fast as a B2 press. There was a touch of nostalgia to the announcement, considering Indigo first announced a B2 press at Drupa 2000, only to pull the plug soon after. Though the Web Press will not ship until next year, a 914mm-version was running on the HP stand at Drupa, and HP has a UK beta site at CPI Antony Rowe.
Kodak also threw its lot in with web-fed inkjet with its Stream technology. Kodak chief executive Antonio Perez memorably, and bullishly, said: We believe this technology will change this industry forever. It’s going to attract many of the jobs that offset now does.
It was a face-off of the pre-press powers though that really showed how far inkjet had come in 2008. In Hall 8b, Screen and Fujifilm provided two of the biggest show surprises, with the world’s first cut-sheet inkjet presses. Screen’s Truepress Jet SX is a B2-format full-colour machine being hailed as a true offset rival, but with the added-value bonuses of digital, such as variable data and personalisation. While its maximum output of 1,600sph means it still has some way to go in the speed stakes before tackling offset’s dominance in long runs, it could well be a viable alternative for short run lengths when its becomes available early next year.
Across the hall, crowds flocked to see the prototype of Fuji’s own B2 offering, codenamed the Jet Press 720. The supplier has banked on the R&D nous of its Dimatix subsidiary to equip the press with the Samba press-wide print bar, which consists of four printheads back to back to account for the four process colours. Fuji was quick to promote the bar’s scaleability, whereby a further head could be added for a spot colour or coating. Even more arresting was the news that its width can also be scaled – Naohiro Fujitani, senior vice-president and general manager, Fujifilm Graphic Systems Division, said there will be a B1 version.
Jetting limits
The biggest hurdle in advancing inkjet technology into the commercial sphere is not the ‘jet’ but the ink. Steve Hoover, vice president of the Xerox Research Centre in Webster, called this the inkjet paradox. In essence, higher viscosity inks of the offset variety would clog the super-fine nozzles, but more watery inks cause problems with image quality and drying.
Toner-based market leader Xerox stole the headlines with news of its iGen4, but hidden among the announcements was a whisper of an entry into inkjet. Its ‘cured gel’ ink is a next-generation product that goes hand in hand with new low-cost modular printhead technology. The consumable’s robustness also pitches it into the packaging league, opening up more traditionally difficult substrates like plastic and metal films.
Proponents and adopters aside, inkjet technology is not without its detractors. One of the most vocal has been INGEDE, the International Association of the Deinking Industry. Back in 2001, the body warned liquid toner processes such as the one used by Indigo could seriously endanger the paper recycling process.
At the time, inkjet accounted for a tiny percentage of the industrial paper waste stream. Fast-forward seven years, and inkjet pages are still a minority. Yet if those inkjet suppliers exhibiting at Drupa have their way, the page volume is set to explode. Screen, for instance, demonstrated the capabilities of its Truepress Jet SX by using the machine to print newspapers from across the world from files sent over the internet.
Problems are said to arise in water-based inkjet inks, compared with ‘hydrophobic’ offset and gravure inks and toner. Mainstream recycling techniques force air bubbles through the pulp mixture to drive ink to the surface, where it can be skimmed off and separated. Inkjet inks, on the other hand, are soluble in water and disperse throughout the pulp mix.
In some cases, they are said to break into small particles that reduce the brightness of recycled paper. INGEDE says in tests of other inkjet inks, such as UV-cured inks, they form large particles that pepper the sheets with
‘dirt specks’.
INGEDE press officer Axel Fischer says: We have to make clear that inkjet newspapers and direct mail do not fit into the higher-grade paper recycling system.
Today, when climate protection has top political priority, ‘undeinkable’ print products are a gross aberration.
Printing guru Frank Romano, professor emeritus at the School of Print Media at the Rochester Institute of Technology, disagrees. I think it’s just a marketing and political thing right now.
Inkjet is going to be a dominant process, so if you don’t know how to de-ink it, you’re probably not going to be in business anyway and someone else is going to do it. Romano adds: I say right now it’s a non-issue and will continue to be a non-issue.
INGEDE is working with manufacturers to find an answer to the problem, which is only believed to be growing as industrial inkjet equipment grows. With many also dubbing 2008 the ‘Green Drupa’, there’s no question the two themes must find a way to reconcile.
The ‘Inkjet Drupa’ showed how the process has matured in wide-format and label work and is also making a play for the production printing market. But the transition will not always be steady. So as a Drupa year closes, all eyes should turn to Ipex in the hope of an equally surprising and challenging show.
A BRIEF HISTORY OF INKJET
1867 Irish mathematical physicist and engineer William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) patents the idea of controlling the release of drops of ink onto paper using electrostatic energy, though without computers cannot control the pattern
1951 Swedish inventor Rune Elmqvist patents first inkjet device, designed to record signals from ECG and EEG readings
1964 Seiko Epson invents piezo-electric inkjet printing as part of a contract to supply official timekeeping equipment for the Tokyo Olympics
1981 Canon shows the world’s first ‘bubble jet’ printing method. The technology is commer-cialised in the BJ-80 inkjet printer in 1985
1984 Hewlett-Packard introduces the first high-quality, low-cost personal inkjet printer, the HP ThinkJet
1987 Iris Graphics demonstrates the first inkjet proofing printer, the Model 3024, at the ‘Laser in Graphics’ show in Miami
1994 Epson reveals the Stylus Color, the first 720dpi colour inkjet printer, with micro-piezo technology to produce faithful print proofs
2000 Inca Digital, a spin-off from technology firm Cambridge Consultants, is revealed at Drupa. Scitex Digital Print launches the Versamark Business Color Press. The model costs £2m and produces 1,090 full-colour A4 pages per minute
