Agfa inket takes a techno leap

When Agfa hitched its imaging destiny to inkjet it connected with one of the fastest developing technologies in the industry. Long regarded as a poor cousin of digital printing after xerographic toner, inkjet has developed in leaps and bounds in the past few years. Print21 charts the potential impact of Agfa inkjet on the future of the graphic arts.


You don't have to convince the general public of the imaging benefits of inkjet. The vast majority of home computer users daily print out projects and photos on desktop inkjet engines, accepting the bright colourful results without a second thought. But it is only in recent years that the professional graphic arts industry has become aware of the almost unlimited potential of inkjet in a wide variety of imaging scenarios.

(Bruce Lowery, head of distribution sales for Agfa in Australia)

Inkjet has entered the sector with the arrival of a number of groundbreaking developments. One of the most important is variable dot printing i.e. the ability to deliver ink droplets of varying size and to control their location with extreme accuracy. Variable dot inkjet means inkjet can now be used for a host of applications that require sharp dots, such as printing text and creating fine vignettes of grey scale. It has meant that inkjet must be taken seriously as a potential universal printing technique of the future due to its extreme flexibility.

Because it is an ink-based system, inkjet can print on a wide range of substrates, from plastic to corrugated board. Oil-based inks, like offset inks, allow you to print on uncoated and absorbent papers such as newsprint. UV inks can adhere to anything from cardboard and canvas to plastic and glass. Ink is also much cheaper to manufacture than toner (although you would not imagine so from the prices you pay for refills of your desktop Canon).

The flexibility of inkjet is not confined to the substrates it can image; no other imaging technology has as many different delivery engines, from wide format to industrial arrays of inkjet heads, to small desktop printers. Inkjet heads can accommodate a variety of ink formulations; UV-curable, dye, pigment and oil based. As a result, the potential for inkjet in diverse applications such as signage and proofing, labels and screen printing is almost unlimited. Inkjet systems are designed to handle four, six and eight colours. The potential is endless, from widening the colour gamut with additional colours to adding a laminate or metallic ink.

It is this large undeveloped market that attracted Agfa to inkjet as its main imaging platform and encouraged it to devote large investments in R&D. When asked why the company had chosen to focus on the development of inkjet, Bruce Lowery, who heads up Agfa's Distribution Sales in Australia, said, “its simple. Inkjet technology offers the greatest versatility in terms of colour accuracy, media flexibility and finishing configurations.”

The future of digital printing

Agfa was an early entrant into digital printing using the Xeikon toner-based engine to explore the market potential. In recent times the company has changed its strategy and is now wholly committed to gaining the leading position as an inkjet company. To this end it embarked on a number of strategic initiatives. It acquired Dotrix, the high-end industrial inkjet company that had brought a revolutionary wide array inkjet engine to market. Agfa then signed on as a technology partner with Xaar, the inkjet head manufacturer that is the most influential patent-holder in the industry. Finally it signed alliance agreements with Korean-based Mutoh, the wide format manufacturer, as well as with Thieme, a company that manufactures automated screen-printing machines.

The Agfa initiated research and development project with Xaar is aimed at further improving inkjet head technology. The UK-based Xaar is recognized as a world leader in the development of piezo inkjet heads. The long-term agreement between the two companies has already produced new printheads with both binary and greyscale versions, with a choice of either 382 or 764 firing channels. Ink droplet size varies from 80 pico litres for high-productivity and high-coverage applications, down to a tiny three pico litres for high-resolution and high-quality applications. This has radically changed the industry's quality expectation for inkjet.

Agfa's first inkjet partnership has now come to fruition with the high-speed digital (Hybrid) screen printing system the M-Press being installed at the British print company the SMP Group in London. It combines the inkjet and imaging know-how technology of Agfa with the experience of Thieme in the development and production of high-performance screen printing systems. The “hybrid press” uses an inkjet system with 64 multilevel print heads, can print two billion drops per second with minimum drop sizes of eight pictolitres (billionth of a litre). The greyscale print head technology allows smoother density transitions and sharper image detail. Thanks to the integrated screen printing unit, the digital prints can be produced with white print, spot colours or varnish in a single throughput.

Such activity and investment – $4.2 million in the Xaar project alone – leaves little doubt of Agfa's commitment to inkjet. The company has carefully positioned itself to have control over all key components of inkjet systems: print heads, imaging software, engines and ink. When combined with Agfa's traditional strengths as a substrate manufacturer and workflow developer, it has seen the emergence of the company as the lynchpin developer and manufacturer in the rapidly expanding sector.