Kodak’s Stream inks

As most people know, Kodak has been developing a new continuous inkjet technology over the past few years and is now exploiting it as the Prosper digital press platform. Kodak has just posted on YouTube a presentation by Jim Chwalek on the ink technology used.

There are two main points. First the use of Kodak’s milling technology to produce nano-particulate inks leads to strong vibrant colours. Secondly, as continuous inkjet is being used it is claimed that there is no need to include large quantities of slow drying wetting agents in the inks that drop on demand heads need to stop nozzles from clogging. This enables Kodak to print high quality images directly on to glossy papers without mottle and bleeding.

Certainly the print samples that Kodak has been showing are impressive. It will be very interesting to see how this ink technology compares with the pre-coating ink fixer or image improver technologies that Hewlett-Packard and Fujifilm are using.

Mike Willis, Pivotal Resources