In our previous article, we talked about the fact that one of the key issues which hold back progress with inkjet is that there is a misunderstanding of what digital should and could do in new markets. I take up the discussion again with Changlong Sun and go further in detail with him.

So would you agree that industrial customers generally misunderstand digital printing?

Yes. People tend to think before they begin an Inkjet project, that Inkjet will deliver everything that your current analogue printing process will give you. This I mentioned in the previous article.

I’ll give you an example. Take my old mobile Nokia. I travel with it as the battery charge lasts one week! This is compared with my smartphone, which will only last one day. Despite this massive gap in battery performance, I still wanted to shift to my smartphone as it has so many great additional functions that my Nokia cannot compete with.

I think that a similar kind of logic can be applied to digital and analogue printing. You have to understand that this new tech is not going to give you all of these new performance values along with a battery that last’s forever. There is always some kind of performance ‘trade-off’. But so long as the new performance advantages are valuable enough, this makes change much easier to accept and understand. The fact is that there will be elements of analogue we will always want to keep, but digital just adds more options for you. When you change your thinking, then it is easier to accept the new technology as it clearly enriches their life and in digital print’s case, their production. So like me with my two phones, manufacturers need to create a strategic approach to integration, which will include the best of analogue the best of digital.

What is the biggest challenge for you and inkjet in your opinion?

To me, first off if you are developing a new approach with Inkjet for a new market then one of the biggest and most important challenges is the ink. It is really well worth investing in spending time getting this right and then the rest of the project will follow on and flow more easily. We find that customers often tend to want to focus more on the machine, and we try very hard to be clear and emphasise that this is the wrong way around.

I tell them that print reproduction for digital printing will never be the same as analogue printing. And why should it?!

Analogue printing is contact printing and this is effective as it pushes the ink down onto the substrate. With digital, we have toner and inkjet processes. For the sake of this article, let us focus on industrial inkjet. In this way, the ink is fired onto the substrate from a distance. So there is air between the head and the substrate. And as the ink is fired, you lose the control of the drop. Momentarily. The ink must, therefore, be made in a different way to that of analogue ink. The tech is very different because the entire process is very different. This is a key issue that must be understood which is why it cannot deliver the same reproduction. This is quite different chemistry and physics. When you have a lot of ink and try to accurately place the dose onto the substrate this is a big and important technical challenge. The results of digital will, therefore, be slightly different when you transfer the ink drop onto the substrate.

In your view, do the end customers (consumers) overly care about the difference?

In my view, the consumer, at the end of the day, does not care. As long as they can read it, it looks right and is safe; I believe that most customers do not care. For example, I buy something for my 3 years old daughter I don’t need the quality of the printing to be too high because she is only interested in the product inside. People who walk the aisles in the supermarket would not care about differences in reproduction in any way. The aisles are so busy you won’t compare packets unless there is a price offer or some kind of special deal on the package itself.

Why are these industries so pre-occupied with print reproduction then?

I guess it is a culture. The printers who run the analogue lines have been trained over many years and are therefore very concerned about ink performance and print precision in line with their particular analogue paradigm. Therefore, they will not like digital, because it challenges their particular standard and to some extent because digital Inkjet challenges their very existence! They will compare everything to how they believe print should be because it is how they’ve been taught.

But I think we have to ask, what consumer overly cares? Digital can provide a great solution, and consumers don’t care, so what is the problem?

Are there any applications where there is an exception to this?

Yes, high-level luxury cosmetic products that command a high price tag are less likely to accept inkjet. Here, the buyer will expect a very luxurious package and will likely expect speciality finishes that maybe inkjet cannot yet achieve at the necessary speed, having said that there is no problem to achieve the print quality. Inkjet can now do amazing digital embellishment, metallisation and so on, but still, analogue commands the speed printing and also the ink availability and therefore the price is much lower. But apart from the high end, most other FMCG products are fast-moving so quality should not matter so much.

Is inkjet already being used in packaging?

Yes, it is. I am aware of projects that will soon be launched in packaging. We will learn more I am sure at Drupa.

In your view, does Inkjet threaten analogue print operators as it may replace them in some way?

Maybe, but inkjet will not replace analogue, even could, it is a very long journey. People need to understand and accept this. The point with digital is that setup speed is unrivalled. Every industry has to make shorter runs. This is hard for analogue to cope with as it means more downtime. Manufacturers need to embrace the advantage of digital in that you don’t have a start-up time and you don’t need to spend time getting the plates, screens, or cylinders registered. Within analogue printing, this takes a lot of time and generates a lot of waste. Packaging printers and converters want to take on more orders and respond more quickly as the runs are getting shorter.

We hear it is relatively normal for printers and converters to take orders but make little and no money from them - they take on the job so as not to turn away business. This is understandable but with digital, you don’t need to lose money! It is awful to hear that several companies are now beginning to lose money. They try to keep the business by continuing to use analogue print but in smaller orders, and there is a better way to do this using digital technology. It isn’t efficient to work like this.

The other area is the lead-time and reliable and variable data. This gives a huge advantage to use digital.

On the other hand, do you find you get customers who want to completely change to digital?

To be honest, no not right now. But this may happen in the future, in maybe 30 years, maybe longer. But the speed to which digital grows or not is entirely dependent on the industry. Yes, ceramics has digitised, but the other markets have not gone the same way, as they are entirely different in market structure, culture and also have unique technical demands. But it depends on the individual industry. I do think that the decor industry could eventually digitise in a big way.

People also don’t realise that inkjet needs a lot of substrate control. If I have an analogue machine and then put an inkjet onto the top, it isn’t just going to work perfectly straight away. If you don’t think things through properly with the ink and substrate right in the beginning you are always going to be busy solving problems that could have been avoided.

Again, planning things out properly at the beginning of the project is really important. Retro-integrating inkjet is a really difficult challenge. People take for granted that they can just put inkjet onto the top of any substrate. The reality is that this is very difficult, often hugely expensive and very time-consuming. It is thinking things through in the wrong way, especially trying to do more than 4 colours.

How has the development of 1200 dpi helped to solve some of the industrial issues with inkjet?

In some cases, it has helped but in others, it has confused matters I think. People need to think microns. Not just dpi. To get this right takes time and isn’t as easy as just putting an inkjet bar over a production line. You cannot simply plug and play. You need to start at the beginning and have a clear idea of what you want to achieve at the end. With each project, the needs are so different and 1200 dpi isn’t always the right answer.

Microns are the key instrument with which to measure quality and precision. Yet people think that if you have 1200 dpi then all your resolution problems are solved. Dpi is not the only measurement that will indicate success.  We should instead be thinking microns. 1200 dpi doesn’t relate to print quality, technically, it is a very crude scale. It also depends on the ink and other elements in the mix. So just having 1200 dpi is not always the panacea!

Unfortunately, people don’t always know what it is they need when they ask for a system with 1200 dpi and single pass. For the job in hand 600 dpi may be good enough and lower in cost.

There are factors that need to align for inkjet to work to the necessary standard. People generally think it is too easy. They think they have to just pull together head, electronics, software, ink and machine and it will work easily. But the inkjet community is not Ikea!

I guess the problem remains that generally people also just assume that digital will be cheaper and it can be in some cases, but not in all. The value often is in the uptime it enables, the responsiveness it provides and the flexibility. Not as a cheaper alternative.

I think that understanding Inkjet is really critical to success and whilst we are getting there and making progress, there is still much to do…

For any questions or to contact Changlong, contact him via email at: changlong.sun@ricoh-europe.com