The answer to life, the universe and everything is 42

In the book ‘The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy’ Douglas Adams describes how the hero meets Slartibartfast and hears how a race of hyper-intelligent pan-dimensional beings built a computer named Deep Thought to calculate the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

Inkjet – looking to the future for the next big thing

In the case of graphics, hardly any of the traditional screen press manufacturers had the vision to react sufficiently to the change of technology and retain a significant market share with inkjet products. But with ceramic tile printing it was different. Visionary companies led the way, others followed and many of the inkjet tile printing systems and inks are produced by long-term industry players.

The “chain of pain” – optimising image quality

When you go into a store to buy a new desktop printer do you look at print samples? These days probably not, as just about every printer produces excellent image quality. Therefore when developing industrial inkjet products or processes, it’s an easy trap to fall into that just putting together the right printheads, inks, data path, RIP and so on, the image quality will automatically be high. Unfortunately that’s not the case, as many other factors will affect the image quality you will achieve.

Digital textile printing – a recent development?

When was the first inkjet textile printer developed? 2002? 1995? 1988? Actually, a lot earlier than that. In the early 1970’s a small consultancy in Cambridge, UK was asked by the large chemical group ICI to come up with a new way of printing textiles – digitally. They adopted continuous inkjet technology and built a prototype that printed 2 colours over a 10 inch wide web of fabric.  And it worked (just).