High throughput industrial digital printing

Digital printing will be beneficial to the industrial printing market - labels & packaging, decorative printing - because,lead. times will be shorter, job lengths can be longer and there is the added benefit of fully variable data printing. A high throughput is needed and the output has to be similar to traditional printing while the substrates vary from very thin to very thick foils, films, aluminum and paper. The development of UV curable jetting inks and robust grayscale IJ printheads make it possible to build an industrial digital multi-color press. To achieve the necessary throughput (currently 800 sq.m/hr) a single pass. system is needed. A single pass system has different requirements and specifications for the printheads, and requires specific tolerances in the assembly while the complete solution has to be efficient and economically optimized. The use of low viscosity UV ink drops in a raster has its own particularities. These requirements and the current solutions are discussed.