by Henry Freedman

Water-Cooled UV Lamp

Applications include digital presses and offset UV printing production.

Small is elegant when it comes to electronics. Technology transfers from printing plate technology (like emulsions, whirl coating methods) have over time resulted in key developments required for electronics manufacture. Now let’s get small.

The “packing density” of circuits on a microprocessor is determined by how small electronics can be made in the manufacturing process. Compact footprint inkjet presses require a small, sustainable and powerful light source to dry ink. Nordson launched a compact water-cooled UV LED ink drying system.

Getting the water out.

Offset lithography produces tons of water across press cylinders that flows onto paper. As we all know, “getting the water out” has been a mantra and challenge.  Water in not going away, In fact, it is now arriving in inks for inkjet digital presses. Water is the solvent and carrier of dies and pigments within inkjet droplets flying ever faster to paper surfaces.

Paper, however, does not like water once it leaves the mill after being manufactured. The vast majority of digital inkjet presses emerging this year are water based. The faster the digital inkjet press runs, the less time there is to get the water out. Making paper surfaces quickly evaporate water towards the surface, and maintaining good printing is tricky. Borita, sodium, sand and other constituents are used in these papers.

To help compensate for these difficulties, more and more paper is being specially coated and married to a specific manufacturer’s inkjet printing process. Kodak is one exception, with its Prosper S10 add-on inkjet heads for conventional presses printing on plain paper.

Drying on higher speed inkjet presses.

Paper transport “wind” speeds within inkjet presses help evaporate water, as one method of drying. As more colors are laid down, drying between colors is employed to do high-quality color work. The volume of water significantly increases in color runs. HP has addressed this issue by applying Megtec conventional press dryers to its T300 inkjet web press. This is a large unit with nice scalability, but not ideal for, say, a 28´´ sheetfed inkjet press. Water has benefits in cooling offset press cylinders and, ironically for the subject at hand, water cools UV LED ink dryers. Water lets the LED light sources become smaller and powerful enough for drying ink, remaining stable and uniform without melting down—a bit like a car radiator.

Nordson’s UVED LED system is designed to work in arrays using standard 62mm /2.45´´ modules, up to a maximum of 1984mm/78´´. These are light bars that stretch across the paper width in the drying unit(s) of the press. UV LEDs can emit single or multiple wavelengths of light. The UV LED electronics units can communicate back to the press. Just as we have controlled ink flow with a fountain, future presses will control energy flow to the drying systems to be more efficient, important since energy costs will rise 30% in the next few years.

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by Henry Freedman

Economic DNA ™

A guide to sorting the choices among electronic, conventional, and long-run digital.

Today’s print production world holds an unprecedented range of options in press selection. Never before have we had such choices intermixing conventional offset, digital, hybrid short run and now, on the horizon, digital long run production printing. With rapidly expanding equipment choices comes an increasing vulnerability – for choosing wrongly.

New technology makes the equipment buyer increasingly dependent on the manufacturer to define these newer presses – problematic when, in fact, many vendors are not totally clear about the economic impacts of their systems on the plant floor. As a result, we are all learning together on a daily basis, with the pace increasing as new press options hit the street every six months. At the same time, we find an increasing responsibility and desire to be green, economically and environmentally – elements that are inseparable from the press platform.

The answer lies in more formalized productivity measurements. One difficulty is that making a proper productivity measurement most often requires incorporating the full range and variety of events about which you are making your decision. This is very difficult considering that track records don’t exist for new things. Using formal economic measurements isn’t so easily done by our trade and craft industry. But new entrants to our field and larger organizations do so. Here’s how you can, too.

Productivity simply defined: Input ÷ Output

Productivity is a ratio of inputs over outputs. You put in money, floor space, people, energy, machinery and materials, take risks, and hope these inputs result in usable outputs: printed sheets of paper. These resources make up what I call the Economic DNA of your work. Let’s see a sample.

To really calculate productivity correctly takes hundreds of variables. Let’s look at one popular little area, energy in the job. If you really want to know what your cost is in a digitally printed page, for example, you need to know how much energy went into it. This also starts to define its carbon footprint and its environmental impact.

Something you can easily do to really get a handle on productivity is simply to define a given job’s Economic DNA. Printing jobs are made up of discrete tasks we call events, such as makeready. Resources are made up of eight elements: person, time, task, material, location, job number and status (as show in the illustration above). If you collect the information on these eight items, you will get your task’s “economic genes” and that part of your job’s Economic DNA. You can do it with a clip board and a stop watch. This information can be quite valuable to everyone’s understanding of the real world you are in. Good luck!

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by Henry Freedman  

Xerox 700 Digital Press

Toner Key to Hot Selling Mid-Range. Xerox rolls on with 700 digital color press. Is it equivalent to the BMW 3 series?

When first announced at Drupa 2008, Xerox garnered over 100 sales of its new model 700 mid-level production color press. No doubt sales are headed north of 1,000 units, if past experience is any guide. Printers have figured out the value equation. Over the past few years, Xerox placed over 10,000 of its 40-ppm+ DC240/250/260 line (which uses related imaging technology).

Let’s see why the Xerox 700 Digital Color Press performs and sells like the BMW 3 series. The new 700 press arrives out of the box with a very broad suite of printing and binding configuration options. It prints on a wide range of substrates accepting both coated and uncoated papers up to a 300-gsm weight, and is most capable of printing on a wide range of specialty materials. It uses a uniquely formulated toner that resists scuffing, so in many cases overcoating can be eliminated. Of great importance is Xerox’s market defining low-cost economics with a nicely configured model 700 coming in at under $100,000 including integrated finishing.

A new version of Emulsion Aggregate or ‘EA’ toner is a big part of the 700 image quality. EA toner particles are grown, not milled, providing key strengths in imaging and finishing—it’s Xerox’s “special sauce.” The latest EA Low Melt toner has been modified to deliver an attractive-looking matte finished color production print. The process of forming EA toner particles allows for greater participation of different chemistries, optimizing color reproduction and finishes. This was enabled by engineering a low melting point for the toner, around 60° C, for deforming and fusing to the substrate. This delivers a significant energy savings, while increasing uniformity of reproduction and run stability.

In the 700, the sheet does not dwell long in the fuser, since Xerox upped the speed to 70 ppm for process color. Yet it holds image register within 1 mm front to back. The EA Low Melt toner has another big advantage: It can also maintain a unification of charge in all ambient printing plant environments—worldwide. This means the platform delivers consistent quality globally. The model 700’s EA prints display good fine-line detail without streaking, smooth halftone transitions, bold colors and a nice matte finish. For some applications, it takes less EA than conventional toner to print an identical image! Tuning for the finish

Over the years, EA-type toner chemistry mixes have successfully delivered to market a wide range of finishes:  matte, from the Xerox DocuColor 3535 released in 2003; gloss, from the EAHG model Docu-Color 240/260 series; and now a very pleasing matte on the 700. (Although DC 240/260 series output has never been called gloss, per se, you could reasonably characterize it that way.) It may also be possible to make an addressable toner, where the operator could dial a gloss level without requiring a coater, more easily adapting to customer preferences. Toner finishes may be part of your future variable-imaging print mix.

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by Henry Freedman    

Developments in low-cost electronics manufacture, coupled with advances in printing and imaging technology, will open opportunities in electronic displays-some using adaptations of traditional print technology.

This isn’t unprecedented. At the arrival of printed circuit boards in the 1960s, photo emulsions, step-and-repeat and etching processes used in litho platemaking were adapted to foster growth of a large electronics industry. Today, technologies such as nano inkjet are positioned to grow into applications supporting low-cost large computer display production and even high-definition television displays (HDTVs).

One early researcher into related new approaches to printed color displays is Sarnoff Corp. The former RCA Laboratories, founded by David Sarnoff, developed color televisions and the CRT picture tubes that brought computers and monitors to the masses. Sarnoff now has a great interest in printing, hitching some of its research resources to produce flexible TV screens using modified versions of conventional printing.

Many firms are entering this emerging arena. The recent ID TechEx Printed Electronics Forum featured nearly 50 exhibitors, including several firms with traditions in graphic arts film-Agfa, BASF, Ciba, Dimatix (a Fujifilm unit), DuPont and Sun Chemical. Their presence is no coincidence.

OLEDs & Imaginative Flat Panel Uses

Kodak is also working in this arena, developing technologies to put organic materials to use for Organic Light Emitting Diode displays (OLEDs). Kodak’s work in OLEDs, the subject of a Dec. 27 feature in the Wall Street Journal, might be seen as a variation on film production, with the flexible plastic substrate in the role of a film base. The exposure systems for printing on the film is comparable to ultra-high resolution imagesetting.  OLEDs are used typically for less demanding applications, such as lower resolution displays for cell phones, than for the higher-end transistors made with other Sarnoff technologies. In the latest efforts at adapting printing to producing electronics, Sarnoff is primarily focusing on the production of transistors on a flexible substrate.

Sarnoff’s newest printed displays could potentially exceed today’s typical computer displays. To date, screen and flexo printing processes have been used to print data entry buttons on flexible plastic surfaces, used purely for mechanical interface. Now the firm says it is nearing a new potential: printing organic transistors for delivering the image onto the display itself-like an inkjet spray of the organic material on a roll-to-roll web of transported plastic substrate. The process can be run at a lower temperature and in an environment that is more forgiving than the cleanroom used in other approaches.

Sarnoff is looking to print unbreakable, reflective, flexible plastic Liquid Crystal Displays (LCD) that are capable of displaying both a printed page, full video, or a combination thereof. We may also see computer displays rolled up into pens (like mini window shades), video smart cards and multimedia presentations on paper-thin displays that follow contours of curved walls or other objects.

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by Henry Freedman    

Hewlett-Packard, the global leader after 25 years of mastery in inkjet R&D, has set a near-term target of bringing this technology to a printing plant floor near you. In fact, you could have it in an office printing device, the CM8060/8050, which HP swears is a multi-functional printer (print/copy/scan). But the true science of this product—along with the speeds and the printing industry’s typical definitions—place it squarely in the role of an entry-level digital color inkjet press.

While its performance is hobbled by a lack offront-end RIP options (you can only use the onboard office RIP), the CM8060 nevertheless qualifies as a light production device, readily usable for up to 50,000 color printed sheets monthly on plain paper and on certain off-the-shelf coateds. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a new print process option.

The CM8060 listed at $23,530. Expect to pay 7¢ per 8.5×11´´ sheet. A utility company beta tester told the Wall Street Journal when it “recently produced100 copies of a 235-page manual for their utility service crews, it cost $2,081.” A 10´´ flat panel displays videos and prompts users; LEDs direct operators to internal machine areas.

With $1.4 billion invested in scalable print technology, expect HP to offer soon a more rugged and industrialized inkjet presses spun from the CM8060’s unique technology. Users need to test the drying capability with each stock. HP liquid ink expands substrate options. Running process color using the best imaging mode yields 23 spm at 600×1200 dpi. This resolution is accurate and honest as we tested with a resometer. To optimize quality, the press adjusts speeds based on images, stock characteristics and image size/coverage relationships—changing output rates based on ink drying and other factors.

Low-coverage-area work prints as fast as 71 spm at 600×600 dpi. HP has built in potential for outputting JPEG-type photoprint files. The next-generation technology challenges dry-toner electrophotography because inkjet eliminates photoreceptors, fuser rolls and oils, toner development, transfer stations/belts, lasers and optical systems. HP has figured out how to apply a linear array of microscopic nozzles to precisely spray ink onto paper rotating on a cylinder, holding the sheet below a stationary line of print heads.

CM8060 detects if droplets hit wrong or are missing, and corrects on the fly. An integrated inline densitometric closed-loop, color-measurement system makes corrections based on production circumstances, measuring processcolors before ejecting the sheet from the print engine. To do this at speeds up to 71 spm requires amazing software, a lot of computing horsepower and advanced sensing/detection technology.

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by Henry Freedman    

With 16 dual processors,HP Blade servers supply the data power needed for the Océ JetStream 2200 twin system.

We are on the doorstep of the elusive higher speed and higher quality digital web press. The next five years will see the turning point. Finally, barriers are falling, leading to increasingly higher speed digital color web presses, which I define as a paper web with process color at speeds of 800 perfected 8.5×11″  pages a minute or faster. Océ has now set the speed record for a commercial quality variable imaging digital color web press, the JetStream 2200, at a whopping 2,180 pleasing color 600×600- dpi pages per minute.

What does it takes to deliver such a printing accomplishment? Océ fulfills its JetStream’s voracious appetite for imaging color at 37 pages per second, 500 fpm. It prints a 20.3″  image area on a 20.5″  web on a variety of substrates. Because it can image paper variably at all points, from page to page, or areas within each page, new capabilities occur that a conventional web press cannot perform. Also, JetStream does not have the limits of a fixed cutoff size, for example, since no plates are used or specific cylinder diameters or cylinder gaps exist. In essence, it can print images 20.3″  wide by any length.

Digital web presses can dynamically tile or stitch jetted image segments to the paper surface without limitation of cutoff size (other than the length of the roll itself). This is a big deal! No longer does a web press have the limit of fixed cutoff. Thus, color jobs of different cutoff lengths on the same paper type can be ganged one after the other during a run. No cylinder adjustments are required; just run the next job online/inline. Other digital webs can do this, but not as fast.

So how does all that data get on press at gigahertz speed to be jetted onto paper? Océ has developed (over 15 years of proven evolution) an ultra-fast RIP that is scalable as to how many computers it has. The manufacturer Raster Architecture. Presently, the JetStream press employees 16 dual-processor HP blade computers run in parallel, thus 32 microprocessors. Océ does not buffer data at the print head, so these computers process many gigahertz of data in real-time out to control the press imaging. For some, this may sound a little like Greek, however, it is important to define the new world of ink flow fired to paper.

Ink flow goes digital 

The data rate the JetStream SRA system is designed to transfer is more than two gigabytes per second between the 16 parallel RIPs and the imaging head hardware. Each sheet generated out of the blades is uncompressed and transferred that way as either four planes (one bit), eight planes (two bit) at 150 megapixels a minute. As each page is fully variable, the complete plane is transferred for each page.

The data rate is accommodated by having eight Infiniband channels between the RIP and the imaging hardware. The controller processes 16 sheets (fronts and backs) in parallel and buffers about 500 pages (approximately, since it varies by page height) between the input and the imaging hardware. The calculation for data rate is 600×600 x pels width / 8 * pels height * 4 (1 bit) or * 8 (2 bit). This can translate into 60,000 scanned lines of ink record-to-paper per second. It is the new way now for our industry to define ink flow. And there are no fountains to clean.

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by Henry Freedman    

Nano marking, already in use in scientific lab research, carries implications for commercial printing. It is strikingly similar to ion deposition printing technology developed by Delphax.

Just as production environments in photo finishing, printing and publishing have workflow tracking requirements, so do areas of scientific research in biochemistry and medicine. Commercial imaging and security printing industries may one day benefit from emerging medical nano marking already in use in laboratory settings. Medical researchers can now mark, and track molecules by recording what are called nanobarcodes” on the molecules themselves. These molecules are sub-micrometer in size. This shows how far we have come placing marks on substrates.

Using a sequential electrodeposition process, metal ions, typically of gold and silver, are deposited on molecules, called “microrods,” by transmitting the ions through a template that has an array of holes or pores. This appears not to be too far from a device familiar in digital printing circles, the Delphax ion deposition printing technology. This system, commercialized in 1981, used an approach that tunneled electrons through a mask to create a printed dot. For nanobarcodes, the contrast between the gold and silver stripes on the molecules allows optical reading of the printed line on the molecule.

New Language for a Line

Since the scientific community is not necessarily versed in the language used for printed images, we find new terminology popping up. For example, research papers use the term “submicrometer stripe” to refer to what we know as a recorded barcode line. What is also most interesting is the great similarity of the nanobarcode process to letterpress electroplating and to chemical etching of relief plates. Also of note is that the process may actually be another form of sublimation imaging, that is, imaging within the substrate.

Reading the Nanobarcode

In the lab applications, the striping pattern is read out via optical microscopy, typically by imaging the reflectivity of the particles under blue light illumination. Silver is highly reflective under blue light and gold is not, leading to a bright/dark pattern on the alternating silver (Ag) and gold (Au) striped particles. So as you can see, the barcode pattern is an intrinsic feature of the particles themselves. The particles can be used to encode the identity of a molecule (e.g. a protein or DNA sequence), adsorbed to the surface of the particles. Note that these particles are on the order of 6 microns in length and 300 nm in diameter. While they are very small, they are much larger than the molecules they are used to identify.

Thousands of biomolecules can be attached to the outside of each single particle. This is sometimes hard for people to envision, as one would expect the barcode to be a small tag placed onto a larger object (like we see with conventional barcodes in the retail industry).

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by Henry Freedman    

Punch Graphix’s Xeikon 6000

At Graph Expo, Punch Graphix’s Xeikon 6000 stood tall—literally and figuratively. The webfed color digital press, its tall print tower housing paper festoon and print engines, features fiber-optic communications and enhanced RIP for increased speed vs. model 5000: It runs 160 5-color, 8½×11″ sheets per-minute on stock up to 350-gsm thick.

A new “FA” (form adapted) toner sharpens details, gives more vivid colors (CMYK colors are Pantone-licensed), improves lightfastness, smooths tones, and greatly extends the 6000’s color space when optional green, red, blue or orange toners run in the fifth unit. It can also carry new clear or white toners with security printing options. Color toner optimizer software advises on selecting which added toner to run, based on intended PMS match, greatly expanding the color space.

The 160-spm duplexed speed surpasses digital sheetfeds such as Xerox’s 110-ppm 4-color iGen3. Just as in offset, color digital web presses are faster than sheetfeds, with advantages in head-to-tail control of paper as it travelsthe press. Along with its handling and feed efficiencies, roll-paper costs less.

According to Xeikon, a new built-in color control system using an X-Rite densitometer holds color stable automatically. Xeikon also has an excellent printing cylinder register system for front-to-back and side-to-side register. Sensors measure paper and cylinder speed and printed images on the substrate, giving feedback to the controller for realtime adjustments and excellent register.

Impressive toner engineering

Ink’s role in offset parallels digital engine toner, which moves to a latent image placed on a photoreceptor, followed by image transfer to the substrate. In digital, the toner is then fused or affixed. With digital, the “how” of toned image transfer to the substrate is critical. The contours of Xeikon’s potato-shaped FA toner particles optimize the press’s 5-color process; their shape also reduces electrical power needs for fusing. (Rounded edges help toner transport from the bottles into the system bins and developing and toning stations. It also tends to lay down smoother without as much overlapping, thus less toner is used—and fused).

Xeikon’s clear toner for matte overprint also has security uses: it appears differently under certain lighting, and can’t be scanned—so fakes and originals can be separated. A white opaque toner for use as a first-down color on clear packaging, or offcolor substrates, can be followed with CMYK toners laid on top. The FA Toner is U.S. FDA-approved for food contact and food packaging.

Xeikon has also engineered an extra magenta, increasing gamut in the blue-violet area to behave and appear like the toner on the iGen3. “This is because more and more, we find that our presses show up in places where iGen3s are already installed, and people want to have the possibility to do load-balancing and reproduce the same jobs also on our machines,” says Dr. Lode Deprez, VP of Punch Graphix Toner & Developer Group. “The extra magenta has benefits in obtaining the highest lightfastness possible [e.g. for outdoor and packaging applications], and having a magenta that is dry food contact, FDA-approved.”

Notably, a lot of work has gone into producing spherical chemical toners where the particles line up like BBs, as in the Xerox DC250, for example. But application of these spherical toners to faster production digital presses hasn’t happened because of their behavior in carrying charges, among other reasons.

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by Henry Freedman    

Kodak NexPress ICS improves print quality and reduces toner usage and component wear. Users begin by scanning in test sheets.

Kodak intelligent Calibration extends component life while improving productivity.

How do you make dry toner perform as well as an offset ink? Offset process advocates have running joke about digital printing having excessive streaking, banding and uneven solids. Looking back over this past year several technologies stood out as significant. One of my favorites is the Kodak Intelligent Calibration System or ICS for the NexPress dry toner press. Kodak’s imaging scientists help the company maintain its lead by applying electrophotographic printing control technology retroactively to existing NexPress installations. This extends press components production lifetime while improving image quality at the same time.

Kodak imaging scientists are creating new ways to better manage toner in production volume color sheetfed printing, mastering uniform solids and inking to the point it can exceed offset quality. The ICS was developed by gifted and talented scientists and engineers at Kodak in Rochester, NY. An amazing side benefit of ICS is that NexPress printing can now be produced using 20% less consumables, for significant customer cost savings. This is a big news item ! You can have speed, quality and cost reduction all at the same time.

Printed image problems for our discussion an be broken down into periodic issues—streaking is one example. The ICS can recognize the one dimensionalartifacts at the root of streaking and most often eliminate these if they are addressable by the image writing system in the press. The ICS also removes banding and can be used to optimize imagery with a new Kodak NexPress ink now entering the market. The ICS brings the pressman a better level of image uniformity; samples done this way look gorgeous.

How ICS Works

Using an external scanner, the press operator simply prints a 4-page test file that is fed into the Kodak CCD based auto sheetfed i1220 ICS scanner placed near the press control console. Within five minutes the test sheets are fed and the Kodak NexPress ICS scanner analyzes them, resets and adjusts the NexPress LED exposure array writing images to the press photoreceptor drum in the NexPress. Next the press operator sees good press sheets being delivered from the back of the press. The ICS gives the press electronics a way to look in a mirror to see itself so the ICS can touch up the press sheet appearance.

Kodak beta tested ICS on more than 90 presses worldwide and found that the Intelligent Calibration System (ICS) significantly increased Operator Replaceable Component (ORC) life for the four major ORCs in the press that affect uptime, quality, and cost. (Users generally reported, “We love this thing.”) The average increase in life for these components was 20%. For customers printing 1,000,000 11×17″ pages per month (one side), the average savings from using ICS would be $4,000 per month. (Pricing programs vary. Actual savings can be more or less.) These savings do not include labor cost savings and the ability to generate more pages through productivity increases. Kodak ICS is impressive.

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