Single Pass Inkjet System Design

High speed inkjet system design and process development

Monday 27 -Tuesday 28 January 2025

Hotel Primus Valencia, Valencia, Spain

COURSE FOCUS

This course provides an in-depth course on the real-world challenges of designing and troubleshooting high-speed single pass inkjet printers. This course is tailored for anyone trying to understand printer design, and a proven process for troubleshooting printers. It will also cover the interactions between inks, printers, and substrate and the process of trade-offs.

Printer Development Process: Learn a step-by-step approach from market requirements to specific design suggestions. Understand drop placement error budgets, vendor collaboration, and decision-making trade-offs. The course focuses on 6 key areas:

Jetting Process: Explore the jetting process, key variables affecting image quality and reliability, and answers to critical questions like "What limits the speed of printing?" and "What causes jetting reliability issues?"

System Integration & Design Process: Identify and avoid common integration mistakes in ink supply design, encoder assembly, and substrate transport. Get actionable design suggestions to streamline your integration process.

Printhead & Ink Selection: Review available printheads and inks, discuss common applications, and learn how to match printheads and inks to your specific needs.

Application Process Development: Discover process development and testing procedures to fine-tune printing processes, including ink/substrate tuning, drying times, color laydown order, and more.

Printer Troubleshooting & Issue Resolution: Gain insights into methods for debugging printer and process issues, quick diagnostic tests, and solutions for more complex problems like color shift and image degradation.

Single pass production printer development is very challenging. This course provides a proven framework for printer development plus practical recommendations on key design areas, testing and solutions to common development mistakes. It also provides a proven troubleshooting process with specific tests and equipment needed.  This course is also useful for inkjet suppliers to understand how their products fit into the printer development and tuning processes.


COURSE OUTLINE

Monday 27 January 2025

12:30 - 13:30 Registration

13:30 Course begins

High speed printer development: Challenges & markets

  • Why digital printing?

  • Inkjet vs. conventional printing: The cost curve advantage

  • Current & emerging single pass markets

Printer development process: Key areas of focus

  • Overview of product development

  • System architectures

  • Process development basics

Jetting process & effect of ink properties

  • Slow motion video of jetting

  • How ink properties affect jetting

  • Rectified diffusion and reliability issues

  • Flow-through vs. non-flow through printheads

Overview of drop placement error budgets

  • Common sources of errors

  • Error budgets concept

  • Banderly Curve: Determining drop placement error limits

  • Printhead mounting and substrate transport errors

17:00 Session ends

17:30 – 18:30 Reception

Join us for local beers, wines and good company!

Tuesday 28 January 2025

9:00 Course begins

Sub-system design

  • Encoder design

  • Printhead mounting

  • Print electronics integration

  • Drying/curing

Ink supply design

  • Non-recirculating systems: Vacuum feed, pump feed

  • Recirculating systems: Constant pressure, recirculating pump feedback, low-cost systems

  • White ink and high pigment load inks

Design of transport systems

  • Belt-based, web-based, sheetfed systems

  • Printing on 3D parts

Printer troubleshooting & issue resolution

  • Methods used when troubleshooting printers and required test equipment

  • Quick tests to diagnose common printing issues

  • Discuss interaction between different sub-systems, inks, substrate and environmental factors that make it difficult to diagnose issues

  • Learn detailed and methodical processes to troubleshoot difficult issues, such as color shift, long term nozzle reliability, etc.

12:30 - 13:30 Lunch

13:30 Session begins

Printhead selection to match printing application

  • Common printhead specifications

  • Application requirements and constraints

  • Fit between printheads and applications

Ink selection to match printing application

  • Ink types and vendors

  • Recently developed ink types

  • Application requirements

  • Vendor identification and selection

  • Ink price negotiation and testing

Process development

  • Common process variables

  • Process testing and equipment

  • Ink/substrate interaction

Vendor & outside resource management

  • Key vendors and their services

  • Design and development management

17:00 Course ends


Course Leader

Rob Rogers, Consultant
Rogers Consulting, USA

Rob has been involved in the inkjet industry for over 20 years, where he has been responsible for the design of a wide range of inkjet production printing systems including high speed on-press variable data printers, inkjet label printing presses, a one hundred part per minute container printer, flooring printers, a solar cell deposition system and many others.

Rob has worked at Dimatix where he assisted international customers with new product development. Rob was a Co-Founder and Principal Engineer of Jetrion, an EFI company. While at Jetrion he was responsible for multiple custom inkjet production machines and the first commercially successful inkjet label press. More recently he has consulted at Heidelberg, Mark Andy, and other clients.