Talking about the Development and Application Status of High Speed Inkjet Printing Technology
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In digital printing technology, high-speed inkjet printing has the characteristics of high speed, low cost, environmental protection, and industrial production. It is considered by the printing industry to be a new technology to change the current printing market.
Technology development overview
High-speed inkjet printing technology is a non-contact printing technology. Its development and application are limited by the accuracy of inkjet, the adaptability of the substrate to ink, the stability of the overall system, and the unit printing cost and productivity.
At present, the high-speed inkjet printing technology commonly used in the market mainly focuses on the thermal inkjet technology represented by Hewlett-Packard, the piezoelectric inkjet technology represented by Japanese manufacturers such as Canon Océ (the Founder uses this type of on-demand piezoelectric spray). Ink technology), as well as continuous inkjet technology represented by Kodak. The development of inkjet printing technology is mainly due to the development of the technical principle of inkjet printing heads.
1. Thermal foaming inkjet technology
The number of nozzles per inch of the thermal foaming inkjet head is as high as thousands, and the nozzle is quite fine, which can produce rich harmonic color and smooth mesh tone, and the image quality is fine. The ink jet has a high initial velocity, a fast frequency, and a high printing speed. The ink path is simple and does not require the recycling of ink, and no waste liquid is produced during production. The disadvantage is that the inkjet head has a certain life and needs to be replaced, resulting in an increase in cost. And HP has invested a lot of research and development in this area to increase the life of the nozzle, while reducing the cost of manufacturing the nozzle.
2. Piezoelectric inkjet technology
Piezoelectric inkjet technology effectively adjusts the size and usage of ink droplets by controlling the voltage. Compared with thermal foaming inkjet technology, piezoelectric inkjet technology has the advantages of relatively regular ink droplet shape, controllable droplet size, and relatively long inkjet head life. However, its printing speed is inversely proportional to the resolution, and the general productivity is low. The ink jet head made by the piezoelectric inkjet technology has a high cost, and the disadvantage is that once the nozzle is clogged, the cost of unblocking or replacing the ink jet head is high and it is difficult to operate.
3. Continuous inkjet technology
The continuous inkjet system has the advantages of high frequency response and high-speed printing. However, the inkjet printhead structure of this method is relatively complicated, and requires a pressurizing device, a charging electrode, and a deflection electric field, etc., which is difficult to mass-produce. At the same time, due to the complexity of the structure of the print head, it is necessary to print and dry the monochromatic group separately. If the four colors are printed at the same time, the quality requirement of the paper will be very high, otherwise the color registration will be inaccurate due to the deformation of the paper. .
At present, various manufacturers are improving inkjet technology in various ways.
HP has increased its investment in two areas to improve its inkjet printing technology. First of all, in February 2015, the 2400dpi nozzle technology was officially released, and in November of the same year, the customer's on-site installation operation was realized. With the 2400dpi high-resolution printhead technology, the problem of large particle size and color transition separation lines that have been common in inkjet has been greatly improved, and the print quality is very close to the offset level. HP will showcase its high-resolution inkjet models at drupa 2016. Followed by online precoating technology, it is well known that one of the main problems of inkjet is "pick picking", and inkjet paper is usually a foreign brand and is expensive. And HP's "adhesive" (ie, on-demand coating) technology delivers good color saturation and anti-offset on plain offset paper. However, since the aqueous ink is difficult to be absorbed by the coated paper, the printing effect is generally poor. Recently, HP has officially released online pre-coating technology and coating liquid, which can perform "hydrophilic pretreatment" on many common coated papers on the market, thereby achieving higher quality inkjet printing.
The development of piezoelectric inkjet technology relies mainly on several nozzle manufacturers, such as Kyocera, Hitachi, and Panasonic. It is said that high-resolution nozzles will be launched soon and are expected to be seen at drupa 2016. At present, many inkjet equipment manufacturers achieve the so-called "1200dpi control accuracy" by arranging two sets of 600dpi nozzles in a staggered manner, and can obtain relatively fine print quality at the expense of printing speed (half the printing speed), but at the same time It also caused an increase in equipment manufacturing costs.
Kodak has cooperated with domestic manufacturing manufacturers to produce special pre-coated paper, but the overall price is still not large enough, the paper price is still maintained at a high level. Another source said that Kodak will release faster high-speed inkjet printing equipment, but recently Kodak is ready to sell its inkjet product line, and we will wait and see what will happen in the future.
Application status analysis
The current high-speed inkjet printing technology has a certain gap between quality and traditional offset printing. In the direct mail market of high-speed inkjet printing, which is widely used in foreign countries, the development in China is not smooth. At present, the application of high-speed inkjet printing technology is mainly concentrated in the publishing field. However, we believe that the application of high-speed inkjet printing in the publishing field is still limited to short-run printing, and does not really reflect the advantages of digital printing. Only by integrating sales channels into the supply chain can we truly achieve " Printed first and then printed to achieve on-demand printing.
For example, the world's leading on-demand printing Rotomail is a single book that produces different versions and different papers on a production line through high-speed inkjet printing. It can process 10,000 such orders every day. In addition, because domestic newspapers have also experienced a large decline in printing volume (mostly 30% to 40% of the decline), you can also take full advantage of the advantages of digital printing, launch more newspapers for niche readers, or follow Newspapers with regional content segmentation also have many foreign success stories worth learning from, such as Symeta in Belgium and CSQ in Italy.
High-speed inkjet printing also has certain application potential in the field of packaging and printing. Due to the relatively low operating cost of high-speed inkjet printing, it is very suitable for digital printing of cartons. Existing equipment suppliers have launched special high-speed inkjet printing equipment for packaging. For example, HP has released two single-faced corrugated inkjet printing. Equipment - HP PageWide Web Press T400S and HP PageWide Web Press T1100S, there are many customers in the country are watching and research, I believe that will soon come to the news of successful installation and application.
However, at present, there are still many packaging companies that are reluctant to adopt digital printing methods. The main reasons include the high cost of equipment and consumables. Compared with traditional processes, the productivity of digital printing presses needs to be improved; the requirements for finishing and packaging cannot be fully satisfied. Specific features, etc. In response to these aspects, the Beiren Group has proposed the installation of digital inkjet units on traditional packaging equipment, combining the cost and quality advantages of traditional printing and the variable information advantages of digital printing to form new traditional printing and digital with excellent cost performance. Printing integrated hybrid printing equipment, which brings new profit growth points to users.
Label digital printing is a mature market with more competition. The application of traceable labels promoted by national policies such as medicines and foods has made digital printing widely used in this field. However, for most domestic label companies, the application of digital inkjet printing is mainly focused on inkjet printing. With the increasing demand for personalized and anti-counterfeiting information in the label market, digital inkjet printing will become an important means for individual companies to implement personalized, diversified and anti-counterfeit label printing.