Where next for industrial digital printing?

Abstract

At present, there are two dominant technologies for the digital deposition of liquids: inkjet and valvejet. Both have very different ejection mechanisms and each has very different technical specifications. As a result, they are exploited in very different applications. Inkjet is used where high image resolution and small droplets are required, leading to its adoption in surface decoration, digital document presses and the like. [1] The construction of inkjet printheads, and the fundamental physics of droplet formation, prevent its use with viscous or sedimenting inks In comparison, valvejet is a far cruder technology as the droplets are much larger, the firing rate is lower and the nozzle density is low. Array versions of valve-jet were initially developed for carpet decoration and it is best suited to applications where the print resolution doesn't need to be high. Unlike inkjet, valvejet printheads are capable of processing viscous fluids. There is thus a large capability-gap between inkjet and valvejet. As a result, in a wide range of applications where there is a demand for accurate digital deposition of viscous materials, no solution is readily available. In this paper, we show that TTP's Vista Inkjet technology is ideally suited to many of these applications, and provide an initial estimate of the market demand for such a solution.