Moving to Another Level in Flatbed UV Printing

Commentary by Andrew Tribute

May 1, 2007 -- When it comes to high-speed inkjet printing few companies have got as much experience as Dainippon Screen. In the past year there has been great attention on Screen’s Truepress Jet520 inkjet press that is sold under an OEM agreement by IBM as the Infoprint 5000. This machine currently sets the target for many other companies with a speed in excess of 400 Letter size pages/minute in full color.

Screen last year purchased the UK company, Inca Digital, and this company has probably the greatest experience of any company of running high-speed drop on demand inkjet printing operations within the POP (Point of Purchase) markets. Inca created the market for large format flatbed inkjet printing in January 2001 when it launched its first product, the Eagle 44. Since that time it has upgraded its product range and today it offers the Columbia Turbo 220, as well as the Spyder 150 and 320 UV inkjet flatbed printers. The Columbia printers are accepted as the highest performance UV flatbed printers in the market. Fujifilm Sericol sells the Columbia and Spyder models worldwide.

In addition to the flatbed UV inkjet POP printers Inca Digital has also developed the FastJet printer together with Sun Chemical. Sun Chemical has the distribution rights for this printer. This is an ultra high-speed single pass four-color printer for printing corrugated material for packaging at a speed of between 90 – 300 feet/minute. This has a maximum print width of 41 inches. The speed depends up the quality required, however if one puts this in terms of Letter size pages/minute it equates to between 360 - 900 pages/minute. The FastJet prints corrugated material with a maximum sheet size of 47 x 63 inches with a thickness of up to 0.35 inches.

Last week Inca Digital announced its latest product for the POP markets. This is the Onset printer which Inca claim sets new speed and productivity standards for this market. Onset is a very different machine to anything else in the flatbed area. It is designed to be fully automated in operation with automatic substrate loading and unloading. Onset’s high-speed of up to 500 m2/hour is generated by a massive array of Spectra printheads. In the machine there are 24 print modules each with 16 printheads. This is a total of 576 printheads with 73,728 nozzles. This provides for both very high speed and for nozzle redundancy. The Onset system draws on development of the Columbia Turbo and Spyder products and the printhead array design makes use of experience developed in the production of the FastJet.

This array is used almost like in a single pass print engine. The print heads don’t move while printing each pass. The substrate mounted on the vacuum bed passes rapidly under the print heads and the array then moves slightly before the return pass of the bed prints the next part of the image. The bed will make a number of passes under the printheads depending upon the quality required. In the demonstration at the Inca Digital headquarters in Cambridge, England the full area of the print of 10.5 x 5.0 ft, the highest resolution took under 40 seconds to print, and the standard resolution took less than 30 seconds.

With the automatic substrate loading and unloading this means a speed of 500 sq meters/hour is achieved in production, or more than 100 full bed size sheets/hour. Most manufacturers quote speeds up to a specific square meterage/hr, but this is only print speed and takes no account of time for loading and unloading the substrate. The Onset times include the loading, unloading and printing times. To put this speed into context, the Inca Digital Columbia Turbo which is considered to be the fastest flatbed UV printer in the market has a maximum imaging speed of 160 sq.m/hr; the HP Scitex FB 6700 a speed of up to 150 sq.m/hr: the VUTEk PV320 a speed up to 93 sq.m/hr; the Durst Rho 600 Rapid a speed up to 150 sq.m/hr; and the Nur Tempo II a speed of up to 120 sq.m/hr.

The Onset printer will use a new generation of the Fujifilm Sericol Uvijet inks.

The Onset press will have a price in the region of £1.5m (a little under $3m). While this is far higher than any other flatbed UV printer Inca Digital believe that the major printers will use the system to provide a level of operating performance and print cost/sq.m that make it difficult for other printers to be able to compete with it. The first Onset is being installed in an unnamed UK customer within the next few weeks, and commercial deliveries will begin in late summer.

What do you think of Andy's view? Please offer your feedback to Andy via email: tribute@attributes.co.uk.

Attributes Associates is an internationally oriented consulting company specializing in marketing and technology issues for the printing, publishing and media markets. The Managing Partner of Attributes Associates is Andrew Tribute, who is recognized internationally as one of the world's leading authorities on these industries and subjects.

Attributes' client base comprises a large number of publishers and printers as well as a significant number of industry vendors. In most cases consulting is carried out at high level to assist such organizations in the selection and adoption of technology, or to define ongoing business strategies covering the likely future directions of the markets.

Attributes have been in the forefront of technology changes and market developments from the time it started in 1984. It has been involved in assisting both users and vendors through the changes in these industries since then. This has included desktop publishing; PostScript imaging; changes in working practices in newspaper and magazine publishing; adoption of digital printing and computer to plate imaging in commercial printing; and more recently the impact of the Internet on publishing and printing markets.

Andrew Tribute is a visiting Professor at University of the Arts London.

Reach Andy via email: tribute@attributes.co.uk.