WHAT IS THE CONTINUOUS INKJET PROCESS?
Fast and contact-free printing on smooth surfaces
Continuos inkjet printers (CIJ) mark or print on smooth surfaces at high speed, with good resolution and contact-free. CIJ printers work with fast-drying ink that is applied to moving products. This makes the continuous inkjet process ideal for industrial series production. The products pass under the CIJ printer in the production line and are marked contract-free.
Continuos inkjet printers are typically used to print best-before dates and batch numbers. Coated and smooth surfaces in particular can be printed very well with fonts and codes using continuous inkjet. These include, among others
- Metals
- Plastics
- Laminates
- Foils
How a continuos inkjet printer works
Continuous ink cycle and droplet technology
In the continuous inkjet process, a continuous ink jet is fed through a nozzle in the print head. A piezoelectric element in the nozzle ensures that the ink jet splits into droplets. These ink droplets are then negatively charged. The alignment for the printer takes place in the next episode: the ink drops fly between two deflection plates through an electromagnetic field. Due to their different electrical voltage, they are deflected in such a way that the desired lettering is printed on the passing object.
Ink drops that are not electrically charged remain in the print head. They are collected, fed back into the ink tank and recycled. This produces a continuous ink cycle, which gives the continuous inkjet process its name.
Advantages and disadvantages of the continuous inkjet process
Versatile printing systems
CIJ printers offer many advantages in industrial series production:
- Very fast printing process
- Very short drying time
- Very variable applicability for fonts, barcodes, numbers
- Good resolution and precise lettering
- Suitable for small and large fonts
- Multi-line printing possible
- Contact-free printing, even with large distances to the product
- Bidirectional printing possible
- Inks for high contrast on dark surfaces
Whether the continuous inkjet process is the optimal solution for a printing task has to be carefully considered. The disadvantages of the technology include the relatively high maintenance and service costs for CIJ printers and the need to use solvents to ensure that the ink dries fast.
