Seeing WAS believing

By Karl Forbes, Group R&D Director, Xaar

In November, visitors to our Cambridge R&D facility saw first-hand how Xaar’s printheads and technologies are redefining the boundaries of inkjet printing, opening a wide variety of new opportunities for textiles, graphics, decorative, and advanced packaging applications.

On a busy day, over 50 attendees were welcomed and an introduction to Ultra High Viscosity Technologywas given by Renzo Trip, our Principal Engineer Advanced Applications & Technology.

Visitors were the first to see the results of a research study into jetting high viscosity water-based inks, performed by Dr Chris Phillips and Professor Davide Deganello at the Welsh Centre of Printing and Coating, Swansea University. During the event, DrChris Phillips, presented independent evidence on the impact of jetting higher viscosity inks when compared to ‘conventional’ viscosities on both coated and uncoated substrates.

Using the Xaar Aquinox printhead and cyan water-based inks by Nazdar, the research team proved that the jetting of Ultra High Viscosity fluids allows an end user to achieve the same colour gamut with half the amount of ink. This offers significant sustainability benefits through both reducing the volume of fluidrequired and the energy needed, for example, by the industrial drying of printed corrugate.

Swansea’s research also demonstrated that with standard viscosity aqueous fluids, it is not possible to increase the colour range over and above what is currently achieved, as adding more ink just wets the substrates more. However, with Nazdar’s Ultra High Viscosity ink, measured colour densities were seen to be up to 60 percent higher; comparable to traditional flexo printing.

In addition, the trials on the non-coated board showed that by using Ultra High Viscosity to enable a higher pigment load than is usually possible, a far higher colour density is achieved. This opens up the possibility of removing the primer when printing onto cardboard, delivering sustainability and process simplification benefits.

Alongside the talks, live demonstrations were givenby Xaar’s team and our various partners, with attendees even able to print their own name in braille on the spot!

The Xaar Irix and Altana Cubic Ink® Rigid 702 demonstrated a perfect match for a low-cost 3D printer, alongside production options for industrial inkjet 3D printing of multi-material and multi-colour parts with the Xaar Nitrox printhead and high viscosity fluid the Altana Cubic Ink® High Performance 4 product range.

Our Xaar Nitrox, together with Fujifilm inks and varnishes highlighted how Ultra High Viscosity Technology enables the jetting of highly functional fluids. This offers the potential to achieve a broad range of applications using inks or standard varnishes in high speed, high build and low energy cure printing.

The printing of bolder, brighter colours was evident for wide-format graphics, direct-to-shape, label and packaging applications with a demonstration from Marabu in collaboration with Koenig & Bauer, Megnajet and Meteor. UV ink with a higher viscosityand higher pigment content was successfully jetted,showing how reducing drop volume enables an increased print speed, lower pinning energy, and improved wetting properties. Alongside a step change in print quality, this significantly reduces set-up time and cost per print for users.

Koenig & Bauer clearly showed all attendees that by switching to Marabu’s Ultra High Viscosity UV inkset, they can halve the amount of ink per printed item whilst doubling the machine speed and saving energy running costs.

Nazdar’s high viscosity version of an existing water-based formulation was jetted using Xaar’s Aquinox printhead. While keeping the binder-to-pigment ratio constant to ensure similar adhesion, increasing theviscosity and pigment loading provides a dramatic difference for corrugate, textile and direct to garment printing.

Together with hosting a successful event at Xaar, the following day saw my talk titled, ‘Seeing is believing’being presented at FuturePrint Tech’s ‘Digital Print for Manufacturing’ conference, also in Cambridge.

Visitors heard how Xaar’s Ultra High Viscosity inkjet is enabling the development of new fluids and providing access to the many potential benefits of digital printing. From improving print quality at higher speeds to enhanced material properties delivering process, functionality, cost and sustainability benefits, theability to jet a wide range of high viscosity, high particle loaded fluids is driving change on many levels.

We were all delighted with the outcome and sheer variety of interest that inkjet is receiving and will continue to build on the success of these events byhelping customers find their inkjet opportunity in 2024 and beyond.

Ends