Industry Professionals With 34 Years Of Experience Suggest: Three New Tracks For Domestic Inkjet Digital Printing Machines

Industry professionals with 34 years of experience suggest: Three new tracks for domestic inkjet digital printing machines

Thanks to the care and support from the National Printing Machinery Standardization Committee and the China Digital Printing Equipment Working Group (SAC/TC192/WG4), I was able to attend the second meeting of the 7th National Printing Machinery Standardization Technical Committee and the China Digital Printing Equipment Working Group meeting in April this year, where I had the opportunity to exchange some of my preliminary ideas on the development of domestic inkjet digital printing technology and equipment with the attending experts. At the same time, during the conference, I earnestly studied the key technologies and key equipment such as digital inkjet and printheads, as introduced by the attending experts, as well as various relevant standards and application achievements, further strengthening my confidence in the better and faster development of domestic printing machinery technology and equipment. After returning to Kunming, I once again carefully studied the "15th Five-Year Plan Outline" and the "Three-Year Action Plan for Printing Industry Digitalization (2025–2027)," envisioning the prospect of standardization leading the way for China's printing and printing equipment manufacturing industries to steadily advance toward green, digital, intelligent, integrated, and automated development. I couldn't help but feel excited and envisioned that the printing and printing equipment manufacturing industries would compete mainly through standards, quality, efficiency, and service. Therefore, I have once again summarized my preliminary thoughts on the future development of domestic inkjet digital printing technology and equipment, and earnestly invite industry peers to offer criticism and corrections.

As a printer with 34 years of experience and deep industry passion, I am quite concerned and disappointed about the prospects of the current 440mm wide-format rotary inkjet digital printers, which mainly use low-price competition models and POD application scenarios, as well as the single-sheet paper inkjet digital printers converted from small offset presses, and the domestic inkjet digital printing equipment manufacturing industry. Amid the ongoing impact of the unprecedented changes in the world, if China's printing equipment manufacturing industry continues to compete on prices without focusing on improving manufacturing standards, product quality, technical levels, and service capabilities, it will ultimately create a negative situation where bad money drives out good. This not only fails to improve the overall level of intelligent manufacturing in China's printing technology and equipment, but also spreads the negative impact of low prices and low quality throughout the entire printing industry, further damaging the market environment and causing the domestic printing and printing equipment manufacturing sectors to fall into an increasingly severe cycle of "involution."

In my view, China's inkjet digital printing equipment manufacturing industry should break out of the low-cost, low-quality competition track of small-format rotary inkjet digital printing machines, and instead explore three new development fields with considerable market value now and in the future.

Large-format high-speed rotary inkjet digital printing press

01

The market prospects for large-format high-speed rotary inkjet digital printing machines replacing traditional rotary offset presses

We generally refer to inkjet digital printing machines with traditional offset large double-sided formats of 880mm or above as large-format digital printing equipment. With the promising prospects for nationwide reading, gradually replacing traditional rotary offset printing machines currently used for books and newspapers with rotary inkjet digital printing machines offers broad market potential and is one of the directions worth striving for. Based on the current market development prospects, the author believes there are several mainstream application fields that can be replaced.

First, it can replace traditional reinforcement offset presses. Although the overall print volume of newspapers has declined year by year, the number of types and the basic market size of newspapers have not changed much. In addition to traditional major Party and state newspapers, 30 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions and 333 prefecture-level administrative regions nationwide have their own Party newspapers and urban newspapers, and even some populous counties still retain their own newspapers and printing factories. If large-format rotary inkjet digital printing machines can connect the "last 100 meters" of newspaper editing and printing equipment, especially enabling personalized newspaper printing, then the market prospects for digital newspaper engines will be very broad.

Second, it can fully replace traditional wheeled offset presses. Textbooks and supplementary materials (including those published and distributed by some compliant training institutions) will continue to account for an absolute proportion of the publication printing business now and for a considerable period to come. In this broad application scenario, printing companies represented by Xinjiang Xinhua have pioneered a promising path of digitalization, intelligence, and integration innovation for the domestic publishing and printing industry, which mainly focuses on textbook and educational materials, through the 890mm wide rotary inkjet digital printing machine produced by Zhiyi Technology.

Third, it can replace various traditional rotary offset presses used for periodical printing. Currently, among the various publicly distributed periodicals in printing business, central and local Party publications consistently account for a large share of the business volume. According to my understanding, in Yunnan Province alone, where I live, there are nearly 20 types of journals and magazines with a single-issue print run exceeding 20,000 copies, with the highest print run reaching about 500,000 copies per issue.

02

The advantages of large-format rotary inkjet digital printing machines in replacing traditional rotary offset presses

From the perspective of printing companies handling books, newspapers, and periodicals, replacing traditional rotary offset printers with large-format rotary inkjet digital printing machines offers obvious advantages in cost, quality, efficiency, and personnel.

First, newspapers and textbooks mostly use 787mm standard paper, while teaching aids and periodicals often use 880mm or 889mm large paper. Due to paper cost and production process constraints, publication printing companies need to purchase rotary offset presses that match both the orientation and large format sizes. This not only increases equipment procurement and daily maintenance costs but also greatly restricts the interoperability and utilization of the two types of equipment. The large-format rotary inkjet digital printing machine breaks through the limitations of the large format of traditional rotary offset presses, enabling both standard and large format paper to be printed on the same machine, while also saving on equipment purchase costs.

Second, traditional rotary offset presses produce a considerable amount of blank paper each time the plate is changed, leading to higher production costs. Rotary inkjet digital printing presses can continuously print multiple types without plate changes, avoiding the large amount of blank paper generated by traditional rotary offset presses due to plate changes, thereby significantly reducing production costs.

Third, it changed the traditional methods of book and periodical production. By supporting a more flexible cutting method, traditional folding and paging processes for books and magazines are streamlined, not only reducing the consumption caused by multiple binding steps but also comprehensively eliminating common quality issues such as folding and paging errors, greatly improving work efficiency and effectively reducing labor costs.

Fourth, using the C9 system as a benchmark and relying on the digital and intelligent technologies of rotary inkjet digital printing presses, printing companies can not only break the technical barrier of relying solely on experienced machine leaders to print jobs well, allowing managers to stand tall during management, but also enabling stable color management and control technology to better control the print quality of books, newspapers, and periodicals, truly achieving the best color consistency effect for printing today, printing tomorrow, printing this year, and next year.

Fifth, based on on-site practice at my workplace and several companies including Xinjiang Xinhua that fully transitioned to rotary inkjet digital printing machines, compared to traditional offset presses, the workshop environment for inkjet digital printing machines has greatly improved. The production workshop basically achieves constant temperature and humidity, with extremely low equipment operating noise, eliminating odors, stains, and other environmental pollution issues caused by inks and cleaning agents in traditional printing production. In such an environment, young people no longer refuse to work in printing processes, and can more effectively address the common age gap among printing companies' staff.

In summary, if rotary inkjet digital printing machines can truly and fully replace traditional rotary offset presses, we will not only welcome a huge leap in China's printing machinery intelligent manufacturing industry, but also achieve a technological leap that disrupts the global publishing industry with the help of AI.

Of course, for large-format rotary inkjet digital printing machines to fully replace traditional rotary offset presses, multiple key technical nodes still need to be overcome. In my view, as China's intelligent manufacturing level continues to improve, the technical challenges of machine body structure, printing quality, and the ability to print ordinary coated paper are relatively easy to solve. The most challenging issue now is speed, and the key breakthrough determining whether large-format rotary inkjet digital printing machines can truly replace traditional rotary offset printing machines.

Currently, newspapers, periodicals, and textbooks all use four-color full-color printing, while teaching aids mainly use double-sided and two-color printing. Reporting offset presses and book-wheel offset presses generally have speeds of no less than 250 meters per minute (some can reach up to 400 meters per minute), while commercial rotary offset presses generally do not fall below 350 meters per minute. Currently, due to the limitations of the printhead itself, the maximum speed of domestic large-format rotary inkjet digital printers in full-color (double-sided, four-color) mode has yet to exceed 180 meters per minute. Only by breaking through the 300 meters per minute barrier can a disruptive replacement of traditional rotary offset printing machines be realized, thereby gaining broad and sustainable market prospects.

On this track, I want to remind all outstanding colleagues in intelligent manufacturing of Chinese printing machinery who are striving hard: amid the wave of localization and the dual impact of self-media and AI, you must race against time, overcome difficulties with a spirit of waiting, and paint the most magnificent and remarkable stroke on the grand blueprint for green, digital, intelligent, integrated, and standardized development of China's publishing and printing industry.

Sheet-fed inkjet digital printing machine

Related thoughts and ideas were discussed in the previous article and will not be repeated here. Based on the discussions and exchanges with multiple industry experts following the previous release, I would like to add the following points:

(1) The author has always firmly believed: under the backdrop of equipment localization, developing domestically produced sheet-fed inkjet digital printers that benchmark against table-type toner digital printers (currently commonly called digital printing machines) is the best and ultimately healthy path for development in the sheet-fed inkjet digital printing sector.

(2) Looking at the various models launched in recent years targeting printing companies and quick print shops, although there are differences in print quality, factors such as print heads and print control software are not key limiting factors. The real technical challenge limiting such equipment is that there is currently no production platform that meets the ideal requirements of printing enterprises and print shops and operates stably, especially a paper path system that can operate continuously and stably. If this key challenge can be overcome, sheet-fed inkjet digital printers, with their lower purchase and operating costs, will directly challenge the market share of current 440-meter rotary inkjet digital printers.

(3) Equipment developers must prioritize and implement ease of operation. To put it bluntly, they must find ways to create point-and-shoot machines that everyone can learn. Currently, in the printing industry, including print shops and even in industrial enterprises as a whole, the age gap among frontline production workers (let alone talent) is very obvious. The majority are post-70s and post-95s, and for positions with some technical requirements, it's basically impossible to find people from the post-80s to pre-1995 age group. Therefore, only by simplifying the requirements for operators and reducing learning difficulty will people be willing to use these machines, allowing printing companies and quick print shops to maintain normal operations.

(4) Given the current situation where the second, third, and fourth layers of non-domestic toner digital printers do not have fully Chinese interfaces, it is important to leverage the advantages of domestic software being fully Chinese.

(5) The most critical technical challenge for sheet-fed inkjet digital printing machines is not the domestic production of the printhead, but the technical means to make the printhead as good as toner digital printers. No matter how long the machine is off, as long as the machine is heated for 10~20 minutes, it can be used normally. Unlike many inkjet digital printers (whether rotating or single-sheet), which spend a long time cleaning the printhead every time you start up, and even after cleaning for most of the day, the printed text still has missing strokes and white lines, leaving the image background with white lines. This not only takes more time and effort but also increases various costs, making it a loss rather than good.

Inkjet digital printers capable of printing paper packaging products

Whether domestic or international, packaging and printing enterprises are the absolute main force in the printing industry in terms of industry scale, output value, profits, technical equipment, and personnel, and are also among the largest and highest-quality markets for printing equipment manufacturers.

From the perspective of substrates, the packaging printing industry is divided into many sub-sectors. The author does not know much about non-paper substrates, so I can only analyze and reflect on paper packaging from the perspective of Yunnan Province, which is a national powerhouse in cigarette pack printing and a major province for printing medicine packs and agricultural specialty products.

Currently and in the future, various products including cigarette packs and medicine packs (such as skincare and toothpaste), with small-batch, personalized, and customized packaging accounting for an increasingly large share of the entire packaging market, and the demand for digital printing equipment is also very prominent.

Currently, the digital printing machines suitable for paper packaging needs mainly include those capable of printing labels, hang tags, paper bags, etc., with domestic and international brands. However, foreign brands face issues such as high production capacity, technical level, and print quality that meet demand, but high purchase and maintenance costs; Although domestic brands have a considerable price advantage, there is still much room for improvement in meeting application scenarios, production capacity and technology, and quality. Moreover, the application scenarios for these products are limited, and the market competition outlook is quite fierce.

In recent years, I have learned from several packaging companies in Yunnan Province that China Tobacco's cigarette packs are currently the most technically challenging, technically demanding, and anti-counterfeiting printed packaging in the world. Therefore, printers capable of printing cigarette packs and various post-press enhancers can easily print on various types of paper packaging printed products.

Unlike most people's traditional stereotypes that cigarette packs and medicine packs are printed in large quantities, in reality, both have small-batch, personalized demands. Just as printing educational aids with high print runs often results in the same labor cost for both large and very small print runs, the unit price paid by printing companies for small print runs of cigarette packs and medicine packs is also the same as for large print runs. When packaging printing companies print paper packaging with small print runs, personalized but with technical requirements similar to cigarette packs and medicine packs, how to solve the pain points and difficulties of process technology and cost control compared to educational supplements and low-print publications is more prominent.

Small-batch printing of educational aids is now perfectly solved by POD technology and inkjet digital printers, while products represented by cigarette packs face extremely technical and technical difficulty, and currently there is no digital printing device that meets the requirements for printing quality and technical processes. However, I have always believed that the market prospects for this segment are broader than the two types mentioned earlier.

For packaging printing scenarios that adapt to high-end process standards, the development of inkjet digital printers should not be limited to single sheets or rotation, nor should conventional parameters such as speed, format, and ink type be met. The core R&D goal should be to meet the full set of cigarette packaging printing process standards. The equipment must not only consider traditional four-color printing but also be capable of multi-color spot printing like gravure and offset printing machines, combined with flexographic and screen printing methods to realize various special effects processes such as UV, reverse UV, and plate bumping enhancement. In addition, regarding printing paper, it should be possible to not only print coated paper (single-sided and double-sided), card paper (double white card, gray-backed whiteboard) and other traditional cigarette pack papers, but also gold and silver cardboard, composite paper (PET aluminum coating, OPP laser film), transfer paper, frame paper, and other suitable paper for different scenarios. In other words, inkjet digital printers suitable for packaging printing will no longer be pure inkjet digital printers, but will be like offset and gravure presses, and may even be able to utilize digital printingTogether with gravure printing machines, it has become a more advanced, smarter, and modular printing equipment. The author firmly believes that once domestically produced inkjet digital printers can conquer cigarette packaging printing, a peak in packaging printing, it will open up a much broader market prospect. This will not only comprehensively break through the currently crowded and competitive POD track but may also in the future lead the development of intelligent manufacturing in international printing machinery and the standards of the international printing machinery industry.