Digital inkjet printing opportunities arise for manufacturing sector

by all | 26 March 2014 8:30 am

By Tom Cloots
In today’s industrial printing sector, analogue methods—including gravure, flexography and screenprinting—continue to prevail, but there is a significant opportunity for digital technologies to reduce overall costs and expand the range of possible applications.

One of the more well-publicized trends has been the rise of three-dimensional (3-D) printing, an additive manufacturing process for specialized purposes, but the industrial use of print technologies borrowed from the graphic arts industry started many years ago. Already, there are many situations where one or more printing steps are integrated into a manufacturing process to contribute to the functionality and/or esthetics of an end product.

Fibreboard decoration, for example, has long mimicked wood textures on furniture and appliances for half the cost of actual wood panels. The fibreboard items are covered with melamine-impregnated paper and a protective layer before being pressed together at a high temperature. The paper is typically gravure-printed with the desired texture by third parties supplying quantities of 50,000 m² (538,196 sf) or greater.

If furniture manufacturers want shorter run lengths, however, or to incorporate printing into their own processes, then digital inkjet technology and ultraviolet-curable (UV-curable) inks may make inroads in this sector. The same would be true for other industrial material surfaces, including tiles, textiles and glass.

In this sense, industrial printing could follow the example of sign and display printing, where inkjet technology has already led to faster job completion and strong adhesion of inks to difficult substrates.

Further, the growth of industrial printing, unlike other markets, is not determined by the demand for printed information, but instead by consumer demand for practical products and appliances—which is certainly continuing to rise.

Tom Cloots is industrial print marketing manager for Agfa Graphics.

Source URL: https://www.signmedia.ca/digital-inkjet-printing-opportunities-arise-for-manufacturing-sector/

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