Players from wide-format segment enters PIA/GATF Intertech technology award
At this year’s coveted PIA/GATF Intertech technology award, companies from wide format segment also made their presence felt by bagging awards – Inca Digital (Onset) and Xaar. The Inca Onset is a large-format UV digital flatbed printer that handles print sizes up to 10.5×5- ft and achieves production throughput of three hundred 3×5-ft sheets an hour. Edge-toedge printing allows for substrates up to 3/8” thick and up to 22-lbs at full speed. This printer can be equipped with a fully automatic load/unload system and is extremely easy to run by one operator with a minimal 20- minute setup time at the start of each day.
Its intelligent design identifies and remaps weak nozzles to assure consistent quality, uses the lowest energy levels possible for UV curing, and employs linear drives to move the bed for smoother motion and better drop placement and accuracy, resulting in higher quality prints.
Xaar was also announced as the recipient of the PIA/GATF Intertech Technology Award for 2008 for their Xaar 1001 printhead. The Xaar 1001 is an ideal inkjet printhead for commercial print and packaging. Designed for highspeed, single-pass applications, the Xaar 1001 head is at the heart of a number of innovative UV inkjet presses. It delivers excellent drop formation and drop placement accuracy with outstanding operational durability. The head’s unique XaarDOTT technology allows variable-sized drops to be produced, giving users the ability to select drop size depending upon the application. Fine drops give smooth tones and sharp-edged text, while larger drops ensure good ink coverage at maximum print speed.
The 1001 printhead also incorporates Xaar’s new HSST head technology, which delivers “through-flow” operation. Most printheads shoot ink by delivering a pressure pulse down a channel that ejects ink from a small nozzle at the end. Unfortunately, nozzles can fail, either being blocked by a particle or because air bubbles form. Failures require a wipe/ purge maintenance routine to reprime the nozzles. With Xaar’s through-flow design, ink flows past each nozzle orifice, keeping the channels primed and operational. Any nozzles lost due to a physical shock quickly selfrecover. In their evaluation of the Xaar 1001 printhead, the InterTech judges said, “This is a truly innovative design of inkjet head technology and facilitates faster speeds, improved productivity and increased resolution.”
The InterTech Technology Awards honour the development of technologies predicted to have a major impact on the graphic arts and related industries. PIA/GATF sponsors the awards as a service to the industry in order to spotlight the wide range of technologies that contribute to the advancement of techniques and processes used in the graphic arts.