Dave Gray is the Ink-Jet Technology Strategic Development Manager at Ricoh Europe for the Industrial Print Business Group. He’s had a long career in print and print technology and seen the sector change through innovation aligned to changing consumer demand. In this article, we ask him specifically about a project that Ricoh has developed with Olbrich, an analogue wall coverings machinery manufacturer and their work with Ricoh and inkjet.

Dave, tell us more about your background, how long have you been involved in print?

I have been involved in print for 46 years now. I started my time in print with a summer job as a hot metal typographer. I was making blocks and setting moveable type. My starting point in print had a direct link to Guttenberg, but not quite as far back ;-)

There is a phrase I use to explain how things have changed over the years. After 46 years in the industry, I am still putting ink on a substrate. What I do hasn’t changed, but how I do it has.

In recent years my work with inkjet has been focussed on industrial printing, and this is no longer printing only on to paper. Industrial Inkjet is about printing onto anything and everything. Industrial Printing can be defined as where the print is no longer the final product. Printing now is part of a much longer industrial process. It is often a small but significant component, part, or stage of that process. Depending on the product that has been manufactured, it can also be a critical part, especially if printing is done in-line with the other manufacturing processes.

Industrial printing by inkjet is predominantly (but not exclusively) single-pass onto web because of the volumes and speed of the manufacturing process that the printing is integrated into. When an in-line digital inkjet printing process needs a service intervention, and it will, the product being manufactured, and the

manufacturing process will define the design of the print module and how it is serviced.

There are certain manufacturing processes where you can stop the web and intervene in the printing process. By the same token, there are other production lines where you cannot stop the rest of the manufacturing processes whilst you resolve your printing issues. A thorough understanding of the total manufacturing process is therefore essential when designing, recommending, and proposing Industrial Inkjet printing solutions.

Generally speaking, there are two drivers influencing the adoption of industrial inkjet printing. On the one hand, we are trying to do what analogue already does, but better, faster or cheaper. Secondly, we are trying to achieve what analogue cannot do, which is things like removing repeat lengths, reducing make-ready times, or introducing non-contact printing. It should also be noted that digital printing is a complementary or alternative technology, not always better than analogue in all cases, but possessing merits of its own.

If you take the digitisation of ceramic tile printing, this was driven not by the cost of printing, but by the reduction in waste of broken tiles caused by analogue contact printing. In pure printing costs, digital was more expensive than analogue, but that increase in cost was more than offset by the value of waste reduction, and even enabled the market to move to thinner (and cheaper) tiles.

Additional value was derived from the digital benefits of non-repeating design, inventory reduction, reduced make-ready costs and waste, etc. Whilst it can be difficult to quantify the value of some benefits of digital printing, it is the total cost of production that determines what the industrial process (including

printing) will look like. The end-user may not necessarily see a change. A digitally printed ceramic tile functions in exactly the same way as an analogue tile manufactured 100 years ago; only the production process changed. Many people use the example of the rapid and successful transition from analogue to digital printing of ceramic tile printing as the justification and template for digitising all printing in industrial production. However, I think that there are a lot of industrial processes utilising analogue printing where it makes no logical or economic sense to convert to digital. I, therefore, see my role as an evangelist promoting digital when appropriate, rather than as a zealot promoting it at all costs against analogue.

Will wall coverings become a market that will adopt Inkjet in a significant way?

Yes, I think it will. Wallcoverings are one of the most demanding applications for digital printing. There have been attempts at producing digitally printed wallcovering, mostly from step and scan printers which were never designed to produce mechanically accurate prints over long lengths, an essential requirement if you want patterns to fit next to one another. These were low productivity systems, mostly using latex and UV, and the substrate has required over-coating or laminating to achieve some of the critical performance characteristics of wallcovering.

Wallcoverings have very stringent requirements in terms of scrub resistance and light fastness, and their toxicity, odour emittance, and fire resistance all have to be approved and comply with regulations. Any digital product has to conform and be similar or better in performance. In terms of print quality, wall coverings are amongst the most demanding. Few printed products will ever be placed next to each other, stared at for upwards of 10 years, and defy the viewer to identify the join between adjacent rolls of wallcovering. Cross-web uniformity, colour and density consistency, mechanical fit, and batch repeatability are all product requirements that the digital alternative has had to achieve if it was to compete alongside the established analogue product.

Despite those huge technical challenges, Ricoh has developed a wall coverings inkjet print technology in conjunction with Olbrich.

Tell us more...

Olbrich is a German machine manufacturer with a leading position in the supply of analogue production lines for vinyl wallcoverings. They too had recognised the opportunity for digital printing to liberate the wallcovering designers from the constraints of a fixed pattern repeat length, but had not found a suitable process or partner that could deliver a product that was acceptable to the market.

Ricoh recognised in Olbrich their core skills in web control and coating and in their deep understanding of the analogue product performance criteria and production methods. Ricoh were able to demonstrate and share a new and patented method of printing oil-based ink into a layer of wet plastisol to deliver a digitally produced product that looks, feels and performs just like its analogue counterpart.

By incorporating the new ink technology, together with a Ricoh built print module using Ricoh industrial stainless steel print heads, Ricoh was able to deliver a print engine that Olbrich could fit to both new and existing wallcovering production lines.

When the first user of the new system demonstrated the wallcovering product at Heimtextil 2019 in January, they did not promote that it was digitally printed, preferring instead to focus on the product as opposed to the process. They had developed a new collection of designs (see picture) that could only be produced by a digital print process because of the pattern repeat length, but in all other respects conformed to the market expectation and requirement of wallcovering. When the product was displayed alongside product produced using traditional analogue manufacturing process, it was not possible to differentiate between the two. I think focussing on product performance, both technical and commercial, is more important than trying to educate people about technology. Technology is important, but it is only a means to an end.

These days, the technology used is no longer part of the print identity. It is now about the product and not the process, and most printing companies are hybrids, and they will most likely have more than one print technology. So why do we have to even lead on the fact that the process is digital? It’s about the product, the output.

What in your view is the key to success with technical inkjet development?

Every industrial project I have worked on started with the fluid. The engineering of the fluid delivery element is the (relatively) easy part. Fluid properties and their interaction with the substrate are critical to the success of a project. We have projects underway all of which have started with the fluid. I deliberately call it fluid, not ink. Some fluids are inks, but others are functional fluids. One misconception people have is that if an ink works for analogue, then it will work for digital. Most analogue inks are opaque and most digital inks are translucent, so they are fundamentally different. Ink viscosity is very different between the two, and thus coverage properties are very different. The primary objective might be to substitute a print technology, but the technical challenge to achieve the same visual and performance characteristics can be quite significant.

And should we ask the question as to whether this is somewhat missing the point?

Indeed. Digital printing cannot and will not do everything that analogue can do. However, digital can do things analogue can only dream of, and the skill is to select the best parts of both processes to deliver a superior end product. I like to say that I am not a competitor of analogue, rather I am complimentary to it, and I want to enhance it with inkjet. The most successful companies in the future I believe will deploy a hybrid solution in their production. Companies that rely on one technology run the risk of not being fully equipped to satisfy the total market.

Wallcovering production traditionally uses screen, flexo and gravure printing processes, and it uses spot colours. The concept of process colour hardly exists in wall covering. The advantage of spot colour means it is easier to control colour integrity over long runs to ensure any two rolls can be pasted side by side and appear seamless, which is crucial in wall covering use.

Where are you now with Olbrich in terms of production and market?

At Heimtextil in January 2019 we showed commercial samples of the wallcovering on the Olbrich booth. The Beta customer decorated his booth with the product from both digital and analogue production and displayed sample books produced on his digital press. He chose not to label it as a digital collection, rather he allowed the collection to stand on its own design merits. This was the perfect show for this project as the event is the annual market gathering for the wall covering market. Designers and producers will promote their collections to the retailers who decide on what product they put into their stores. What is clear is that when a consumer buys the wall covering, they buy the design and not how it is printed or who printed it. The end consumer will continue to enjoy and “use” the product long after they remember where they bought it from.

When we first showed the technology and output to the designers within the production companies, their eyes lit up, and from the bottom of a dozen desk drawers came a multitude of designs that had never been printed because of the limitations of the existing printing technology. Now that some of these designs have been printed, and that there has been an acceptance and demand from customers for the product, it is clear that there was a frustration from both supply and demand sides of the market that has now been removed by the newer technology. It is enabling new creativity and possibility, and this can only be good for the market.

Is the Inkjet option more expensive than the analogue for wall coverings?

If we compare the cost associated with analogue printing against digital printing, then the cost per roll follows the typical analogue vs digital model. Each new design printed with an analogue press will require a complete set of printing cylinders (flexo, gravure or rotary screen) with associated lead times and production costs, minimum quantities of matched spot colour inks, and the make-ready time and make-ready waste material whilst you bring everything into registration. If you only want one roll as a sample, then analogue is an expensive option. If you want to print a batch of thousands of rolls, then analogue will be the cheaper option. We believe that 800-1000 rolls is the commercial breakeven point for digital, depending on the design.

Have runs of wall covering prints become shorter generally?

Yes. 10 years ago a short run or minimum order would be 2,000 rolls. Now the printers say they are prepared to print as few as 500 rolls to retain the business. Demand for patterns have changed, and digital can help manufacturers to stay profitable even with small batch sizes.

Why has the demand for short-run increased?

One of the key reasons I think is Russia, the world’s largest market for wallcoverings. It is now difficult to sell wallcoverings produced in Europe into the Russian market. Russian companies have been investing in their own modern printing equipment, and this has created excess capacity in Europe. The biggest markets within Europe are Turkey, Germany and the UK. Couple the excess production capacity, the reduced market size open to European manufacturers, and the general increased demand for a unique product, and manufacturers have had to accept smaller batch sizes of some designs as the new norm.

Why has short-run become a fashion norm?

People like individual prints. For instance, a print run of one direct-to-garment has greater value than a mass-produced design. The same goes for wallpaper. People like to have something unique and exclusive. The consequence of this is there are potentially many more designs, but with a static market volume, fewer rolls of each design. That said, “unique and exclusive” can command a higher sales price as it has a higher value to the consumer.

Colour matching of wallpaper to paint and other furnishings is a very personal and subjective process. The colour accuracy of phone displays, PCs and tablets are not good enough, and people will still visit stores to select and match colours.

The second driver for change is the huge amount of waste in inventory downstream in retail and wholesale; there is the damage downstream in terms of warehouse damage, and with people taking small samples of the product in-store as samples which wastes the whole roll. We are taught when decorating to only use rolls from the same batch, so consequently, you get a lot of ‘bin ends’ in multiple locations. You never get the same batch again due to supply chain. At the end of the season, all these pockets of stock downstream have to be collected and destroyed, and this waste can be as much as 40% of everything produced.

The production cost of this surplus product, together with the associated warehousing, distribution and disposal costs has a significant impact on the real cost of an analogue roll that is sold, which in turn pushes the economic breakpoint between analogue and digital even higher.

So digital has a role that adds efficiency and reduces waste?

Yes. If you move onto ‘just in time’ supply, you then have the cost savings of reduced inventory. Take the warehouse. If you print speculatively 20,000 rolls in a batch, you have to store that in good storage condition as you don’t want the product to degrade. How far downstream do you push it? The further you push it, you no longer have storage costs, but have incurred the transport costs. If your stock is in the wrong location, you then risk a no-sale or further transport costs.

The profit in wall coverings is as much about efficient logistics as it is about printing costs. The worst time of year is when you are printing for the following year’s design range. You may have 200 designs and require 500 sample books.

All 200 patterns have to have cylinders; the right ink mixed, and manufacture 25 rolls of each design. Only once all 200 designs are printed can you begin the process of compiling each pattern book. Digital offers the opportunity to print “rainbow” rolls where each roll contains all the elements of a single sample book, and assembly can begin as soon as the first roll leaves the press. Additional books can be ordered and produced at the same cost as the first book, such are the benefits of digital.

So this system looks set to add a lot of value in this sector. To conclude, in your view what is the best way to innovate new technologies?

I like to think of the customer first, and his needs. Exciting though the technology is, it’s about how you apply that technology to a need, problem or opportunity in a way that all parties involved derive benefit. Successful projects and partnerships begin with sound financial justification. The technology comes second and is

the enabler. Projects that begin with a technology looking for a home will ultimately fail to realise the potential and will disappoint at least one party.

What we are saying in this article is that we at Ricoh are capable and willing to work with companies who are looking to manage that transition from analogue to digital where appropriate. They will either be analogue manufacturers and producers, or manufacturers of analogue equipment responding to market

demand. Olbrich has proved to be a great partner for Ricoh, both in terms of their technical contribution to developing the whole system and as a channel to market; it is an Olbrich machine powered by Ricoh. We are sure that this project will be a great success, and we also look forward to developing more projects in the future with other analogue OEMs in other industrial markets.

Interested in connecting with Dave? Contact him via: David.gray@ricoh-europe.com