Developments in ink technology are driving some radical changes in inkjet printing, as new products open up labels, packaging and industrial printing to the technology, says Jo Francis

Think of EFI and you tend to think of MIS systems, Fiery colour servers or wide-format inkjet printers. But since last summer the California-based firm claims it has also become one of the biggest label press manufacturers in the world, thanks to the success of its Jetrion 4000 UV inkjet narrow web press. How on earth did that happen?

A quiet revolution is under way in the labels, packaging and industrial printing space, and the latest UV inkjet -technology is driving the change. Atlantic Zeiser, perhaps pigeonholed in the past as a numbering box supplier, is now a provider of -complete inkjet systems and has just introduced a highly sophisticated UV inkjet printer with a print width of 70.5mm and a speed of 24m per minute. The Gamma 70 is a full-colour, single-pass system that prints on tricky substrates such as plastics, glass and metals and has applications in packaging, labelling, coding and beyond. In fact, one of the challenges for the -manufacturers of these new systems is that, because potential applications are so wide, it can be -difficult knowing what to focus on.

Atlantic Zeiser business development and product marketing director Michel Gilet says the firm sees key markets in industrial marking, labels, and packaging. "The bigger -opportunity is in industrial applications, because 80% of the material is plastic and we have strong know-how in how to print onto it," he says. "But it's not a fixed target programme. We have initial ideas about where the product will fit -perfectly, but we are also aware we may have some new -applications." The company introduced the Gamma 70 at this week's Fespa Digital, the first time the firm has ever exhibited at the event.

So what is driving these developments? Jetrion sales -director, Europe, Jason Oliver says: "UV inks -combined with recirculating printheads are a breakthrough that have brought piezo inkjet to a point where it's commercially viable. The challenge for all these other organisations is to bring in all the other things that make a system work - software, workflow, controlling the printer, materials handling and general integration knowledge."

EFI has chosen to focus its Jetrion offering on labels. "If you try to change a whole bunch of markets at once you'll fail. We want to get really good at this market first," Oliver adds.

Specialist expertise is coming into play elsewhere. too. Atlantic Zeiser, for example, is using the UV curing know-how it developed for its Omega plastic card printing system in the new Gamma 70. "We have developed our inkjet knowledge and experience for more than 10 years and it's a very important part of what we offer," says Ralf Hipp, vice president of digital printing and coding systems. "The -development of the Gamma 70 is so good, customers using the same printheads are contacting us asking us to help them. It's not as easy as it seems to take four print heads and make a system. It's the fine-tuning."

"The unique proposition is the whole printing system," adds Gilet. "If you make a machine using adapted inks and dryers you will have a lot of difficulty moving it into -production in customer installations. We want to ensure the complete value chain for the customer."

Both EFI and Atlantic Zeiser make their own ink, and both are also using Xaar's 1001 printhead, a high-end, single-pass, greyscale model. The head is also used in another new machine that was also on show at Fespa, the SP2 from German supplier M Print. This differs from other narrow web offerings in that it is designed to print 3D objects up to 250mm thick, and is available with a wider print width of between 70-215mm, aiming it squarely at markets where pad and screen printing have been dominant hitherto.

"There's no doubt inkjet can replace pad or screen printing for small batches, thanks to its fast set-up time and variable data options," says Gilet. "And you don't lose time changing colours either. We can offer a complete system for less than _200,000 (œ180,000) - the same price bracket as analogue equivalents, but with all the advantages of digital."

Atlantic-Zeiser has two versions of the Gamma: wet-on-wet where the ink drops land on each other without treatment, and one with `pinning', where after deposition the skin of the drops is cured. The latter would give better results for text and logos, while the non-pinned version is better for -applications such as decorative patterns.

While the company uses Xaar heads in its new product, it is a long-time user of Konica Minolta heads in its existing Omega system, so why the change? "Every head manufacturer has some heads that are better suited for a particular physical parameter; for example speed, resolution, drop size, drop volume, stitching possibilities, greyscale and fluid -capabilities," notes Gilet.

That said, Industrial Inkjet, the distributor for Konica Minolta heads, was also at Fespa with its new engine, the Colourprint 144. It chose to demonstrate the speed and -quality possible by putting a -camera on top of the press so that visitors to the stand could watch it print pictures of them in real time. "We wanted to show how fast this thing is at ripping and colour profiling on the fly," says managing director John Corrall, who cites improvements in UV inks as one of the developments that has advanced systems such as the 144. "A couple of years ago we started to get up at conferences and say the current inks are less than ideal. The old ones came from the wide-format area where wetting properties are irrelevant. We're getting some significantly better inks coming through now, so it seems to be working."

Industrial Inkjet is not selling to end users but to expert press manufacturers in particular fields, such as cartons, labels, credit cards or industrial printing. "We started selling heads and providing detailed technical support. Then, to -simplify the customer's machine design phase, we started to sell head plates and ink systems. Now we will also supply a complete print engine," says Corrall. "This opens up the opportunity to sell to machine builders with no previous inkjet experience. But our existing printhead customers also see our engine as a way to trial new markets or to speed up R&D. We can deliver something in weeks that they might take months to put together."

The firm has already sold systems for credit card machinery applications and for printing on to 3D plastic parts. "From the various print sample projects we have carried out we -suspect that direct digital product decoration may soon outgrow labels as the top digital application," adds Corrall, who describes requests for information as "a bit exponential at the moment - there's no recession when it comes to enquiries."

With the notable exception of EFI, understood to be well into double figures with its Jetrion 4000 sales, the other -models in this new area for inkjet are just coming on to the market and customer details are, in most cases, being kept -confidential for now. Atlantic Zeiser's first Gamma system has been sold to a customer in Germany where it will be used to print high quality perfume labels with varying designs. Industrial Inkjet's customers have installed five systems, encompassing labels, credit cards, and plastic part printing. M Print installed the first generation of its system at the end of last year in Germany, where it is used for printing on to plastic peppermint boxes. And while Heidelberg's separate inkjet company Linoprint wasn't present at Fespa, it will ship its first system at the end of this month to a German label printer, where it will produce labels for the chemical industry.

There's much to keep an eye on in this latest inkjet space, though no single system will necessarily come to dominate. In the meantime, a rising tide is lifting all boats.