An inkjet printer which prints on up to 2000 products per minute with flying drops of ink has entered the market.
To be introduced at the Label & Print show in Zurich next month, the JET3up industrial inkjet printer from Leibinger prints best-before dates, batch numbers and data matrix codes on such things as bottles in milliseconds.
If manufacturers call back batches, this information needs to be easy to read for consumers – with no smudged fonts. The challenge is to guarantee imprint quality even at high line speeds.
The JET3up prints products at a speed of 36 km/h, and keeps up with belt speeds of 600 metres per minute.
“The printer is fast enough to mark up to 2000 products per minute in passing,” explains Christina Leibinger, CEO of Paul Leibinger GmbH & Co (represented in Australia by Result Packaging).
“In spite of these high belt speeds, an exceptionally good typeface quality is guaranteed."
The JET3up can print not only up to five-line small fonts, but also graphics, barcodes and all common data matrix codes with a print height of up to 16mm.
Operation is via a 10.4” touchscreen that's as intuitive to use as a smartphone.
If the user integrates the printer into the company network, he or she can control the machine from literally any point on the globe and monitor it with a PC, smartphone or tablet.
The principle of flying ink drops
The JET3up prints without having to touch any products. How is this possible? With a cylindrical print head mounted next to or above the conveyor belt – with which a head pipe of up to 10 metres in length is connected to the hydraulic system in the printer housing.
The heart of the so-called continuous-injection (CIJ) technology works inside the print head.
120,000 electrically charged ink drops per second shoot through a nozzle in the direction of a collecting tube.
When printing, two deflection electrodes come into play. They change the trajectory of individual drops, so that they land as an image point or pixel on the product surface. The remaining drops fly into a catcher tube and circulate in the system.
