Egg boxes is just one of a multitude of applications for inkjet
Industrial Inkjet increased its sales by 50% in 2014, doubling the size of its manufacturing base while staff grew from 25 to 40. The company handles sales of Konica Minolta inkjet printheads outside of Asia and these are now being used in a wide variety label and packaging printing applications. Sean Smyth visited the Cambridge-based company.
‘While other companies in similar markets have been laying off staff and suffering due to a perceived global slowdown, we are continuing to expand at an ever-faster rate. The security, labelling and product decoration markets have provided the strongest growth,’ said managing director, John Corrall.
Inkjet expert
Industrial Inkjet Ltd (IIJ) provides a range of inkjet modules – heads with mounting assemblies and ink supply – to system builders and integrators which build the heads onto transport systems and link the front end. It offers advice on any aspect of the use of inkjet technology and runs ink certification programmes that involve 14 days of continuous running to make sure there are no adverse reactions.
There are systems in many innovative print applications from flooring to car licence plates and hard hats, with some 130 installations into labelling and packaging. IIJ reports considerable interest in single colour and hybrid imprinting, rather than full colour bespoke machines. One integrator is Nottingham-based Focus Label Machinery which reported the third installation of its d-Flex hybrid flexo/digital press into Euro Label Printers in 2014
IIJ is finding this type of equipment, providing single colour variable print capability (not just black) are ramping up steadily, with additive modules on existing flexo presses and finishing lines. It is not just imprinters however, with a 1.2 metre wide colour printer for flexible packaging being manufactured during my visit. IIJ also sells components used in printing egg boxes with water-based inks, onto rigid plastics, jewellery sleeves, glass bottles, and there are also interesting systems for tubes and cans.
One to watch
Konica Minolta produces a range of piezo printheads and it will be introducing a new family of MEMS (micro electronic manufacturing) piezo heads during 2015. IIJ expects to show a label printer using the new heads at Labelexpo in Brussels this coming September.
The new heads will have a native resolution of 1200 dpi and drop size down to 1 picolire with frequency of up to 100 kHz. The silicon MEMS fabrication techniques used involve a high initial investment but the ease of manufacture will provide large volumes of high quality heads. This eliminates the multi-stage component manufacture and assembly techniques that can lead to waste and nozzle inconsistency in operation.
Konica Minolta uses MEMS manufacturing for other products it makes including touchscreens for mobile devices, etc, and it will lever this experience into inkjet head manufacturing. IIJ said that these heads will provide higher performance, with more accurate high speed jetting from the high density arrangement of nozzles.
The head itself is designed to improve reliability with continuously recirculating inks, while it is easy to arrange multi-colour arrays and swap heads out as needed. The first MEMS head, the KM128SNG-MB, was released in 2012 for printed electronics rather than graphics applications.
Industrial Inkjet company is definitely one to watch as inkjet applications mature and grow, with IIJ offering proven, working solutions that will further expand the reach of digital packaging.
