Is inkjet not quite ready for industry as some have suggested for years, or is the reverse true – is industry not quite ready for digitization? Richard Darling, Ricoh’s Industrial Printing Business Developer, has enjoyed a long career in inkjet, so is ideally positioned to offer insight into how it has developed and evolved. In the FuturePrint Tech Fest session ‘Groupthink and the Inkjet Arms Race’, Darling challenges the ‘groupthink’ zest for highest specification within inkjet and suggests the industry should embrace ‘faster adoption for slower inkjet’ rather than striving for theoretically faster yet less reliable technology.

Darling calls out print snobbery and setting unrealistic expectations, then falling short on delivery. When it comes to manufacturing, this isn’t an option. “if a process is designed to operate 24/7 at a certain speed, that's what it has to do,” says Darling. He uses an automotive example to illustrate trade-offs between reliability and speed, comparing a Formula One car to a Volvo estate. F1 may be faster, but for everyday needs and reliability, the Volvo estate is more practical and useful.

The printhead is a big part of the overall package so understandably people are interested in the latest and greatest technology, but actually the major factor should be what the process or end-consumer actually needs. Do they need the things that high resolution can deliver, and can that be delivered reliably? “I think a lot of people specifying and introducing the latest tech, when it really may not be appropriate!” argues Darling. “It’s about choosing the right thing for the job, regardless of whether it's new or different. It's just about whether it's actually the appropriate thing to deliver the right amount of something in the right way.”

From a financial perspective, Darling points out the diminishing returns on investment in the printhead arms race as the R&D dollar spending adds up, highlighting the importance of taking stock of what’s out there, considering the big picture, and being able to justify the investments. Using the example of silicon MEMS print heads, Darling describes how much investment it has taken to get to where we are currently. “From a printhead manufacturer’s perspective, you have to formulate a printhead which is a bundle of all sorts of different technologies to do a useful job, and if it does something useful, you achieve volume. If it doesn't, then it's potentially disastrous,” says Darling.

So what are some of Ricoh’s solutions to the challenges outlined by Darling? During the session, he takes attendees through Ricoh’s printhead map, detailing the bulk piezo, metal printheads ranging in drop size options as well as the pipeline of thin-film or silicon MEMS printheads. “The metal heads, all with common fit and form, operate in similar ways: you can take the same platform and operate with any of those to give a wide application scope sharing the same integration engineering – I think that’s valuable.”

Summing up the thesis of his presentation, he concludes:

·      “First principle thinking is always a good idea: determine what to solve, apply digital where it has an advantage, but don't be constrained by trying to match the form of something that's existed before.”

·      “Use analogue where necessary, there are some great hybrid systems that use a bit of analogue and a bit of digital, that can work well.”

·      “Get the story straight – don't try to sell a muddled story, if you've thought about it from first principles then the story automatically gets straight, it’s often muddled when you don't.”

·      “Prove economic benefits, what we're actually doing is enabling consumers to have variety, and we shouldn't lose sight of that.”

Watch the FuturePrint Tech Fest session ‘Groupthink and the Inkjet Arms Race’ here.

Listen to the FuturePrint podcast episode ‘Inkjet, Digital-Analogic & Solving the Right Problems with Richard Darling, Ricoh Europe’ here.