Dec 13

Anticipating 2012, in particular Drupa

By Mike Willis Uncategorized No Comments »

It’s that time of year when we reflect on the past year and wonder what the new year will bring.  In the area of ink jet, 2011 has brought some interesting product launches, in particular the commercialisation of the Memjet technology by Lenovo, LG, Lomond, Xante, OWN-X and others.  At the recent IMI Europe Ink Jet Conference in Lisbon, we heard that ink jet textiles are a fast-growing application, and ceramic tile printing is also rapidly gaining market share.

So what will 2012 bring?  Well most eyes are focussed on Drupa, the printing industries trade show held every 4 years in Dusseldorf, Germany.  Although many of us in the industry associate Drupa with expensive hotel rooms miles from the city and the terrible Drupa song, it really is the pinnacle of the printing industry calendar.

Ink jet is increasingly demonstrating great potential for use within the commercial print industry.  The main applications for the ink jet web presses launched so far has been books, coupons, transpromo, newspapers on demand and the like.  But ink jet ink technology is evolving and the capabilities of ink jet are being extended.  So far Fujifilm and Screen with their sheet-fed presses, and Kodak with their web press have claimed the ability to print on to paper types used for general printing in the industry.  It’s quite a challenge, as we have been seeing at Pivotal Resources from the patent applications being filed.

We can also see from patent applications that other vendors are likely to join the market for high-speed printing.  For instance Ricoh has many patents on page arrays of their own printhead technology.  At present, Ricoh subsidiary Infoprint uses engines from Screen that in turn incorporate Epson printhead technology.  Canon is another potential player in this market.  It now owns Océ who make high-speed web-feed ink jet prises using Kyocera printhead technology.  But we can see from the patent literature that Canon is developing page arrays using thermal ink jet, similar to the technology used in HP’s web presses.

But lets go back to the beginning and to Memjet.  Back in April 2011 it was announced that Delphax plans to launch a Memjet-powered ink jet press at Drupa.  The technology certainly has the potential print speed and cost structure to make a breakthrough product.  But let’s hope they haven’t forgotten all the other industry needs, in particular the ability to print onto a variety of paper types.  So far we have only seen Memjet-based products working on absorbent or coated substrates.  Is there a new ink technology coming up for Memjet?  That would make it a very interesting breakthrough for this market, but it would also really improve the capabilities of the Memjet technology in desk-top and wide format markets as well.

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Sep 30

Memjet goes wide

By Mike Willis Uncategorized No Comments »

For a while now Memjet has posted on its web site and YouTube channel videos showing a wide format machine, which uses 5 Memjet printheads to print 42 inches wide in a single pass. We’ve also seen many of the patent applications covering this machine published and have reviewed them in our patent review journal Directions.

A couple of weeks ago Xanté announced the Excelagraphix 4200 which uses the Memjet wide format engine, and this week at LabelExpo 2011 in Brussels Hungarian company OWN-X announced their version, the WideStar 2000.

As usual, seeing is believing, and the speed at which a wide image emerges from the machine is impressive at 300 mm (12 inches) per second. Prints on various ink jet coated media looked excellent, on plain paper pretty good.

The OWN-X booth was busy every time I went past, with the crowds attracted to the SpeedStar 3000 label printers – also Memjet-based – that were introduced a year ago and have been selling well. The WideStar is attractive for CAD applications, including architecture, but OWN-X were printing signage and labels on it at the show to try and tempt customers.

Memjet also features in the IMI Europe 19th Annual Ink Jet Conference programme that we have been organising. Thomas Roetker, Vice President of Engineering of Memjet Labels will be talking about where Memjet has got to, and where they are going from a technological and performance viewpoint as well as commercial. His presentation will be followed by Ivan Bulaev, Head of Marketing of Lomond, who are marketing the 60 page/minute office Memjet printer, and will discuss “Taking the Memjet-powered Evojet Office into the market’.

The conference is in Lisbon, Portugal November 9-11, 2011. You can find full details of the conference and presentations at IMI Europe’s web site at www.imieurope.com We have a great line up of presentations this year from adphos, Agfa Gevaert, com2C, FUJIFILM Dimatix, Global Graphics, Hewlett-Packard, Infotrends, INGEDE, IT Strategies, Konica Minolta, Lomond, Lumen Dynamics, Memjet Labels, MGI Digital Graphic Technology, Sepiax Ink Technology, Stork Prints, Tonejet, VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland, Xennia Technology and Xerox.

Jun 21

Olivetti’s thermal ink jet technology

By Mike Willis Uncategorized No Comments »

It’s often overlooked, but Olivetti was one of the pioneers of ink jet, with a range of drop on demand technologies in the early 1980′s. They commercialised the dry spark jet technology, and had a liquid version too. Then there was early piezo technology too. But I remember well in 1990 the surprise announcement of their thermal ink jet technology. It was a surprise to HP engineers too, who I met within a few days at an IS&T conference. It turned out there had been some cross-licensing going on that not even the HP printhead designers were aware of.

Over the years Olivetti has had several different owners, but somehow the ink jet group has continued developing new heads and products. Because they are not sold in Best Buy or other retail outlets in the US, Japan or most of Europe, few people know they exist.

Olivetti were exhibitors at the IMI Europe Ink Jet Technology Showcase 2009 and talked and showed their ink jet products aimed at industrial products. Just a few days ago at the Ink Jet Technology Showcase 2011 event in Barcelona they showed even more.

First of all their MEMS fab has the capacity for 50-80,000 6 inch wafers per year. As well as ink jet printheads they also make other devices, particularly for life science applications. They have thermal ink jet printhead modules with print widths of 0.5, 1 and 2 inches, capable of jetting aqueous and various solvent fluids.

The most recent addition is a 4 inch wide module. This has 4 x 1 inch dies staggered and overlapping to allow 4 inch wide printing in a single pass. There are 2,560 nozzles at 600 dpi and the drop volume is 15-160 pl. Most incredible is the claimed drop ejection velocity of 15 metres/second, greater than most piezo printheads. This will allow a large increase in working distance from the printed substrate, opening up new applications.

You can find out more about Olivetti by following the links on the IMI Europe web site, and a shameless plug (as I also run IMI Europe) – you can now buy the conference binder with 22 supplier presentations, 6 Tech Talk Tutorials and 4 Keynotes for only €345!

Feb 17

Xerox Production Inkjet System

By Mike Willis Uncategorized No Comments »

Xerox has this week shown something closer to a production version of the high-speed ink jet system they showed at IPEX last year.  The unfortunately named Xerox Production Inkjet System (PIS) is claimed to be the first waterless high-speed ink jet press, although some might say that Miyakoshi has shown high-speed UV curable ink systems before and they are waterless.

Xerox is using an iteration of their phase change inks, and points out that by not having water in the system they can avoid paper cockle and drying problems.  The phase change inks solidify on contact with the paper substrate and sit on the surface ‘just like offset inks and toner’. Our tracking of patents has shown that to achieve acceptable drop spread on the substrate, it must be pre-heated.  The paper then passes over heated shoes opposite the printheads.  With phase change inks the ink supply tanks, connecting pipes and printheads all have to be heated.

The printheads are arranged in a large 2D array and Xerox says they are automatically aligned.  Certainly keeping them all in register with the thermal cycling within the machine must have been an engineering issue.  The heads are operator replaceable and involve 2 screws and 3 connectors, taking 5 minutes.

The print speed is a very impressive 152 metres/minute, or 2.53 m/sec.  At the quoted ‘up to 600 dpi’ this would lead to a nozzle frequency of 60.8 kHz.  This may be achievable but my guess is the highest speed is at a lower resolution than 600 dpi.  Incidentally the patents talk of 3.75 m/sec.

Something else the patents talk about is printing packaging materials.  The problem then is finishing, with the substrate, creasers and cutters having to be heated to avoid picking up ink.

The system shown will print on to low-cost offset papers without bonding agents or pre-coats, says Xerox. However noticeably absent from the presentations I’ve seen was mention of coated papers.  As phase change inks rely, like toners, on mechanical keying to the substrate, coated papers are likely to be more of a challenge.

And yes, I was too cheap to fly to Lucerne, Switzerland to see the machine at the Hunkeler Innovation Days 2011 show in Lucerne, Switzerland - I’ve just attended the virtual event on-line.

You might read into this post that I’m not a great fan of phase change inks and you’d be right.  I’d like to love the technology, I guess I’ve just had my fingers burnt a few times handling the printheads!

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Sep 28

Conventional Wisdom Often Isn’t

By tomashley Uncategorized No Comments »

Conventional wisdom has taught us that thermal ink jet (TIJ) printing requires aqueous inks. After all, water has quite unique properties that are well suited to the technology. This was perhaps underscored by Hewlett Packard’s clever but complicating use of aqueous latex inks for printing on vinyl substrates. Surely if HP can’t find a simpler solution for its very own TIJ technology, there must not be one!

But recently ImTech (Corvallis, Oregon) was granted a patent (USP07763668) for a UV curable TIJ ink, claiming the use of alcohols, esters, or ketones as the driver fluid. Most of the examples incorporate about 24% methanol with conventional UV curing monomers, oligomers and photoinitiation packages. One of several suggested surfactants is included as protection against kogation and one of several black pigment dispersions as colorant.

ImTech offers two such inks for sale through distributors, in new HP-45A cartridges. Both inks are black; one is optimized for conventional UV lamps, the other for UV-LED systems. Suggested applications are in coding and addressing, and in printing on plastic cards.

The patent suggests (but does not claim) the use of similar driver fluids in non-aqueous TIJ inks other than UV curable ones.

In fairness to HP, there are other reasons to stick with aqueous inks than simple “conventional wisdom.” The driver fluids mentioned are emitted as VOCs (Volatile Organic Compounds) at a minimum and may also have low TLVs (Threshold Limit Values) for human exposure. UV curable inks for piezo printing and aqueous inks in general avoid these environmental issues.

It should also be noted that Xennia (Letchworth, UK) offers an aqueous UV curable ink suitable for TIJ printing, under the trade name XenInx Peridot.

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Sep 23

Tablet and printer – a happy marriage?

By Mike Willis Uncategorized No Comments »

HP's new Photosmart eStation

In a burst of excitement this week HP launched a range of new products, including the Photosmart eStation.  This is seen as a way to get products into the living room, a wireless all-in-one which looks sexy.  Well, I’m afraid glossy black is so 2008 in the UK.  When the first all-in-ones appeared they looked like scanners stuck on top of printers.  This one does too, with a tablet sitting on a shelf at the front as well.

Yes, very convenient if you want to quickly find something on the internet and then print it out.  Maybe I’m missing something here.  But what if you have kids in the house – how are you going to find the tablet?  Ever known a kid to return something to its ‘home’ when they finished using it?  Before you can copy something have you got to hunt down the tablet, as that acts as the control panel too.

It’s also meant to allow you to lay on your couch, browse the internet, and send things to print.  But everyone knows that when you send something to print the printer beeps to tell you it has run out of paper or ink, so you have to get up and go over to it.

So, is the Willis household likely to buy one? Well, I can see it could be useful, although it isn’t cheap.  But the answer is no.  The marriage that concerns me is not that of tablet and printer, but mine to my wife.  I can’t see the boss agreeing to this big glossy black box in the living room.  Sorry HP!

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Jul 27

RFID Redux

By tomashley Uncategorized No Comments »

A recent announcement from Wal-Mart may skirt around the impasse that is slowing the adoption of RFID. This impasse is typical of those that occur in new technologies; potential adopters consider the technology too expensive and potential investors and developers are reluctant to move forward in an unproved market. In this case, the reluctance is compounded by resistance on the part of privacy advocates, who believe RFID will provide a means for big brother – either corporate or government – to track our behavior and movements. It’s also true that large capital investments by retailers are needed, and these are not likely given the current state of the economy.

The impasse isn’t being broken by a technological breakthrough, but instead being skirted by a higher valued application. The expected application, replacement of barcodes by RFID tags, is still too costly, with tag prices remaining at $.07-$.10. Instead, the new application is the tracking of apparel on the sales floor, to ensure that all sizes and styles are on display. Stores that have piloted this application has seen apparel sales grow by as much as 14%. In-store inventory tracking is expected to improve as well. Wal-Mart is beginning to roll out this application in its stores.

So what does this have to do with ink jet? Nothing directly, but it does promise bring the subject of RFID back to the fore in the retail environment. After all, everything Wal-Mart does is then considered by virtually every other retailer. This in turn may help to break the impasse and stimulate new investment.

The expected role for ink jet remains smaller than in previous years (see The Ink Jet Blog for May 5, 2010). The printing of antennas has fallen into disfavor with increases in the price of silver, and if they are printed, it will likely be by conventional printing technology. But ink jet has unique benefits in the field of printed electronics, and the printing of RFID chips in a-roll to-roll process will be vital to driving tag costs down to the $.01-$.02 that is needed for large-scale adoption. It seems likely that printed silicon, such as that under development by Kovio, will be the first to market.

Visionaries believe that eventually, we will see RFID chips and antennas printed simultaneously with the printing of packaging. In that scenario, ink jet may play a much larger role.

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Jul 23

Where Have All the Printers Gone?

By tomashley Uncategorized No Comments »

I write the news section of Pivotal Resources’ “Directions” ink jet patent review publication. I just completed the March-April edition. If this hardly seems like news, bear in mind that it is meant to reflect the industry news at the time that the patents issued. The patents can’t be viewed and reviewed in real time, so to speak, so everything is a couple of months in arrears.

It has become more and more difficult to fill the allotted two pages with meaningful news. When I took on this task in 2002, the problem lay in describing the crowd of new desktop printers and MFPs briefly enough to allow room for anything else. Desktop announcements have slowed to a trickle, and now I must do far more research!

In the first four months of 2007, there were nineteen new desktop models. This rose to twenty-five in the corresponding months of 2008, but fell to fourteen last year and just ten this year. Of the ten, only one new print engine was represented, and most were barely noticeable revisions of earlier products.

The desktop market is obviously mature, both in terms of technology and of shipments. In fact, worldwide shipments of desktop ink jet devices fell by 15 percent, from more than 27 million in the fourth quarter of 2007 to 23 million in the corresponding quarter of 2009.

Though the desktop market is mature, IT Strategies estimate that 85% of the revenue generated by ink jet technology is still derived from desktop devices. Investment enabled and justified by this sector is a major feature of the ink jet landscape. This investment allowed the various suppliers to enter other markets, ranging from large-format printing to photo kiosks to commercial printing. Investment in ink jet by the market leaders is clearly falling rapidly.

Memjet-based desktop products are expected to join the entrenched competitors within the next few quarters. The arrival of those products will generate new buzz around home printing. It will be interesting to see whether the arrival of Memjet can help to revitalize the market and kindle new investment.

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Jul 22

Is Memjet for Real? Part 2

By tomashley Uncategorized No Comments »

In April, I wrote that the first real Memjet-based products would be shown at IPEX the following month. Indeed, the RAPID X1 and X2 label printers, manufactured by Rapid Machinery Company of Australia, were introduced at the show, as well as the Astro Machines M1 printer from Addressing and Mailing Solutions of the UK.

However, the first introduction actually occurred in April at the ON DEMAND Expo in Philadelphia, where Rena Systems showed its version of the Astro Machines M1.

These were followed in June, by the announcement by OWN-X Industrial (Budapest) of the SpeedStar 3000, a roll-to-roll, roll-to-sheet and fanfold format label printer.

Each of these is powered by the Memjet 8.66 inch (A4) wide, 5-color (CMYKK) print head, which delivers 1,600 dpi native print resolution. Top speed is 12 inches per second. One full 8 inch diameter roll of labels can be printed in just over 8 minutes.

Most significantly, I have been able to confirm that some of these devices are currently shipping to customers.

Each Memjet printhead consists of 70,400 ink jet nozzles, each less than 100 microns in diameter (roughly the width of human hair). These produce up to nine hundred million 1.2 picoliter droplets per second. The printheads are made of silicon in a semiconductor fab and driven by Memjet’s proprietary, “systems on a chip” print engine controller electronics, firmware, and software.

There continue to be strong indications that a Memjet-based large-format printer will appear at trade shows this fall, but it appears that we will have to wait a bit for the much-anticipated office printers. Certainly a phased rollout of a new technology by a new company makes sense. Speculation concerning an OEM customer for the office devices centers around consumer electronics firms like Sony and Panasonic, as well as computer manufacturers like Lenovo. This, too, makes sense, as Memjet will supply not only printheads and ink, but other subsystems and even print engines ready for private labeling.

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Jun 07

Digital newspaper press for $20,000

By Mike Willis Uncategorized No Comments »

It sounds unreal, but at IPEX 2010 Riso showed a digital duplicator that prints A2 sheets at 100 pages per minute in a single colour.  The machine being shown was a prototype and the intention was to judge market potential.

The machine is effectively a stretched (sideways) version of Riso’s existing range.  Even the projected price of $20,000 is double that of the existing half size A3 machine.  The machine was demonstrated, and by comparison to the large digital and conventional presses at the show, this unassuming press just immediately started and printed.

Duplicator technology is over a century old, and used to be the province of schools and churches.  In my youth you typed a stencil.  My first job was with UK stencil duplicator manufacturer Gestetner.  The company founder supposedly watched a kite fall into a puddle, and then someone walked over it.  He noticed the water came through where the shoe had pressed much more than it did elsewhere.  So a stencil – a thin coated film – could allow ink through wherever the film was broken, for instance by a typewriter.

In the 1980′s came thermal stencils, using a thermal printhead similar to those within fax machines to melt the image on the film.  This brought stencil duplicators into the digital age.

The print quality shown was excellent – both on newsprint and a white ‘office’ type paper. Sure you can’t match a high-quality laser printer, but the beauty of this process is that it’s low-cost and fast.  Inks are fast drying without any need for a dryer.

The drawback? Well, like conventional presses you are printing from a master.  So there is no electronic collating, this is high-speed printing of the same page.  But add some off-line finishing equipment and you can easily collate, fold, stitch and trim.

So, what could it be used for?  Well, there are three other qualities that I haven’t mentioned.  Firstly it is relatively light at 152 kg, so you can easily put it into a small truck.  Secondly it has a low-power mode consuming only 400 watts.  Thirdly this is a robust process, not a sensitive laser printer process that needs a controlled environment, nor a fussy ink jet system.  So guess who has shown an interest?  The military!

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