Leaders Summit: Will Everything in the Future be Thin Film Inkjet Heads?

As innovation in inkjet technology continues un-phased by the global pandemic, and as the world begins to rise up again as COVID-19 begins a welcomed retreat from society, at the FuturePrint Leaders Summit, we ask will everything in the future be thin-film inkjet heads?

This exciting technology is much talked about in inkjet circles, and its potential is considerable. But does it possess the necessary characteristics in the future in order to become the dominant technology of choice for inkjet?

We also question whether Bulk Piezo is actually a better if maybe arguably less exciting option for the future?

Richard Darling, Ricoh Europe, posed this question in a previous article:

Thin-film promises uniform precision manufacturing with high yield, low cost per nozzle with high volume production, small and highly complex optimised structures to deliver fluids with even pressure distribution and highly controlled jetting performance at previously unseen firing frequencies.

This is a clever and exciting technology development for the Inkjet industry. Traditional ‘Print snobs’ might even be impressed. Suddenly, the previously impenetrable markets that offset and flexo have dominated may now be open to seduction by the charms of thin-film Inkjet.

This enables higher nozzle counts with tighter packing densities plus smaller drop sizes. The benefits these deliver can include highly defined imaging, small text in superb quality, photo-imaging and tonal gradients that have only so far been achieved by traditional printing. Printing with thin-film technology could take place at break-neck speeds by inkjet standards, though still relatively slow by analogue standards. Some regard offset speed and image quality as a critical requirement for industrial production could this breakthrough to enable wholesale conversion from analogue to digital, overcoming the perennial insistence on offset image quality and high throughput speeds for single-pass inkjet to be adopted for multiple industries. But this is in itself a debatable point as in fact I raised in his recent talk at the FuturePrint Virtual Summit. Others have questioned the assumptions behind “digital-analogic” philosophy.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH BULK PIEZO?

I am an evangelist of innovation, but not innovation for the sake of it.

Many forms of bulk piezo printheads already meet the needs of many industries. Everyone would be interested in possibilities for lower cost and better imaging quality at greater speed.

In reality, a printhead is an imaging ‘paintbrush’. The print swathe has a hardware cost. Per inch of swathe, a 1200dpi printhead has more nozzles (double that of a 600dpi printhead) so even if the nozzle cost of a 1200dpi SiMEMS is half that of a 600dpi bulk piezo device, the print swathe capability costs the same.

Firing tiny drops at high frequencies is more problematic, and risk of nozzles failing to fire increases. Commonly, SiMEMS operation needs to provide nozzle redundancy and error correction for most single-pass processes. Necessarily some nozzles are therefore not fully utilised but are held back as error correction back-up. Is this compromising reliability for cost-effectiveness or cost-effectiveness for reliability?

Either way, it’s a trade-off.

Nothing new is perfect: For thin film, this is the case but, sure, this is exciting and very clever technology. However, progress in the adoption of this exciting technology hasn’t been fast. My view is that bulk piezo Inkjet should not be quaking in its boots just yet. Before the Emperor begins parading his new clothes, there are plenty of industrial applications that can already be readily addressed by tried-and-tested bulk piezo inkjet. Taking a new tech gamble based on digital-analogic may not be such a good bet, particularly during 2020/21, an era of such uncertainty.

If you are interested in this topic, then you must join us for our Inkjet Head to Head Discussion with John Mills CEO of Xaar, Martin Schoeppler CEO of Fujifilm Dimatix and Mark Bale CEO of DoDxAct who join Richard Darling and me!

Join the discussion on March 24 here

Download the Thin Film White Paper written by Richard Darling here