Digital printing for labels & packaging 2022

JULY 2022

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Digital Printing— from Corrugated to Cans p.5

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As Seen at PACK EXPO Las Vegas

By Pat Reynolds, Contributing Editor

By combining a sophisticated understanding of inks with the latest in ink-jet print engines, GSI and IP are bringing in-house, on-line CMYK Case printing to the packaging line.

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ne intriguing innovation to come out of PACK EXPO Las Vegas last September was that thanks to developments in digital printing technology, brand owners are now able to do their own four-color CMYK printing of corrugated cases right on their own packaging lines.

The need for such in-house case-printing capability has been driven by several factors, but at the top of the list is the ongoing trend toward shorter runs due to SKU proliferation.

There’s money to be saved if a brand owner can order one common case from a corrugated supplier and then print small batches in the quantities needed. Added savings come because this small-batch approach reduces the chance for obsolescence should information on preprinted cases become no longer accurate.

Leading the charge in putting four-color CMYK printing capability immediately downstream from a brand owner’s case packing and closing equipment is GSI, or Graphic Solid

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Inks. The firm demonstrated at PACK EXPO the Colorize 180, capable of CMYK printing with a resolution of 180 DPI at 1,000 ft/min, and the Colorize 360, capable of CMYK printing with a resolution of 360 DPI at 500 ft/min. Also notable is that International Paper is getting in on the action by teaming up with GSI on an initiative that will let brand owners do their own full-color, small-run, brand-on-demand printing in a way that’s never been possible before. But before going there, it’s helpful to look at GSI’s back story.

GSI is a company that got its start as a maker of solid blocks of hot melt ink used chiefly by hot melt inkjet printers.

Over time the firm took on distribution responsibilities for OEMs such as Linx, Matthews, and others in the marking and coding business. But in 2019, management decided it was time to begin making its own equipment in addition to being an equipment distributor and maker of inks.

“It’s not like it came out of the blue, because it was

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In-house CMYK Case Printing for CPG Companies

DIGITAL PRINTING FOR LABELS & PACKAGING

Mounted on a conveyor at PACK EXPO Las Vegas were three digital printing technologies from GSI: Colorize 360 (A), Colorize 180 (B), and NOLabel (C).

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grades than you’d get on most print-and-apply pressuresensitive labels without having to order, pay for, or inventory rolls of label material,” says Beauregard. “Also eliminated is the downtime caused by having to put a new label roll in a print-and-apply labeler. Plus it facilitates recycling because now you no longer have a plastic film label on the corrugated when it reaches the recycling center. Not to mention the fact that by eliminating pressure-sensitive labels, you’re eliminating the release liners that typically wind up in the solid waste stream.”

Adds Pender, “It’s essentially printing a liquid label on a case.”

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White inks are challenging

Both porous and non-porous corrugated cases can be printed by the GSI digital printing solutions. something that was always on our radar,” says GSI President Chad Pender “But all the right pieces and people had to come together at the right time, because we weren’t looking to just do another marking and coding machine. We saw an opportunity for something that was really different, something the brand owners really needed.”

Pender emphasizes that offering brand owners equipment capable of high-quality, four-color, digital printing on erected, filled, and sealed cases was actually Innovation 2.0.

Preceding the Colorize 180 and 360 equipment was GSI’s NOLabel technology, a way of using digital ink jet printing and UV curing to lay down white ink on corrugated cases followed immediately by black ink for printing of lot and date code information, including bar codes. According to GSI’s Mark Beauregard, NOLabel is a game changer.

“With white you get high contrast and better bar code

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So why has it taken so long for such an obviously beneficial solution to emerge? Largely because white inks are notoriously difficult to handle. The titanium dioxide pigment in the ink is very heavy, which makes it want to sink and separate from the ink formula. The NOLabel system addresses that because its Seiko Instruments print heads have a high-flow ink circulation structure so that ink constantly circulates immediately behind the nozzles at high speed. This ensures nozzles recover from blockages automatically and instantaneously, eliminating the need for routine nozzle cleaning during operation and significantly reducing ink wastage. Ink is in constant circulation and always ready to jet, removing the need for priming or purging before starting printing. Moreover, GSI not only makes the NOLabel printer, it also makes the inks, which presents opportunities to optimize the compatibility of the ink with the printing equipment.

“We did a lot of research on market-available white inks, and we had difficulty making them work on a porous corrugated substrate,” says Pender. “So we developed our own specialized formulation that, once cured, results in a beautiful white pop. Having an ink formulation facility on one side of the building and a marking and coding equipment manufacturing facility on the other side played a big role in allowing us to offer a solution that until now has not existed for this market.” And because they’re UV-curable inks, the corrugated cases being printed can be either porous brown kraft or non-porous coated cases.

The original thinking at GSI was to lay down white with one print engine, cure it, lay down black with a second print engine, and then cure the black with a second UV lamp. But two print engines and two curing lamps come with a cost, plus the total solution would have had a larger footprint.

So the team devised a way to use one print engine to print white first and black second and then use a single curing lamp to cure both. But it’s not wet black ink on wet white ink. GSI’s “interlacing” technology includes software that keeps the two inks from touching, as Beauregard explains.

“Remember, with ink-jet printing you’re talking about laying down small dots. If your software gives you sufficient control over where those dots are laid down, the laydown of white ink can leave parts of the corrugated—the parts where the black ink will go—without ink.” He adds that It’s

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possible that in some applications—perhaps where speed requirements or substrate peculiarity dictate—two print engines and two curing lamps will be needed. But those will be more custom than routine.

Watch a brief video of Colorize and NOLabel technology in action at PACK EXPO Las Vegas.

Print engine architecture GSI’s ability to pull this off has a lot to do with the architecture of the Seiko RC1536 print engine. Each of its four nozzle arrays has 90 orifices, which means the engine is capable of delivering 360 dpi. If half the nozzles are dedicated to black and the other half to white, then one print engine can print in two colors at 180 dpi. That’s how the NOLabel solution works.

Moving on to the Colorize 180, two print engines are used. The first has half its nozzles dedicated to cyan and the other half to magenta. The second has half its nozzles dedicated to yellow and the other half to black. The resulting capability is four-color printing at 180 dpi. And then on the Colorize 360, where four print engines are used, all 360 nozzles of each engine are used for each color, which results in four-color printing at 360 dpi.

While it was the huge market opportunity for black and white print on corrugated that got things rolling at GSI,

All Your Package Printing Answers in One Place The PACKage Printing Pavilion returns as a highlighted feature in the South Building at PACK EXPO International 2022, to be held October 23-26.

This pavilion will shine a spotlight on digital’s advantages for short-run, on-demand, cost-effective, variable data, and personalized packaging as well as labeling, coding and marking solutions.

If you’re dealing with any of the following, this is a spot for you to visit: • SKU proliferation • Micro-marketing efforts • Sustainability • Traceability As consumers look for smarter packaging options, advancements in digital printing are more critical than ever, making this pavilion a must-see for all show attendees.

Visit www.packexpointernational.com to learn more and register to attend.

October 23-26, 2022 ■ Chicago, Illinois, USA

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once the NOLabel technology was more or less sorted out management thought, why stop there? “We quickly found ourselves morphing into CMYK, to be honest,” says Pender.

“It relies on the same Seiko print engine, which does a phenomenal job with color printing.”

“It’s hard to tell the difference between the 180 dpi and the 360 dpi,” says Beauregard. “But the option is there.

Feedback from most packaging consumers indicate the 180 dpi is good enough for porous media, and 360 dpi delivers better print and color quality when needed.”

According to Beauregard, using marking and coding equipment to print full-color CMYK directly on a corrugated case in a brand owner’s manufacturing facility is considerably different than printing CMYK on a sheet-fed or roll-fed press.

Because on a press the distance between substrate and ink jets is optimally controllable. This is not the case when a corrugated shipper is the target.

“No two corrugated cases are the same,” says Beauregard. “Once a case is formed, whether it’s taped or glued, if the flaps don’t align perfectly, that case is going to be slightly skewed. So when it goes past the ink jets, the leading edge might not be the same distance from those jets as the trailing edge. Without a very good controller and a print engine capable of throwing the ink far enough and accurately enough, the ink droplets can start to break up or become misaligned, causing suboptimal print quality. Our print head controller’s electronics and software are very powerful, and the Seiko print engine is designed to throw the inks far enough to maintain accuracy. On top of all this, if you’re going to fit this kind of marking and coding equipment on a brand owner’s packaging line, it has to be delivered in a compact package. And that’s what we showed at PACK EXPO. It was three compact systems—the Colorize 360, the Colorize 180, and the NOLabel—mounted on stands that can be wheeled right up to a conveyor.”

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International Paper’s role Now let’s circle back to where International Paper and Jeff Grossman, Manager CVA/MPS, fit in. CVA stands for Customer Value Analysis, and MPS stands for Mechanical Packaging Systems. Grossman and his team are laser focused on understanding how to help IP customers optimize value, sometimes by capitalizing on new developments in packaging machinery. For years they’ve been hearing customers ask for better ways to personalize and customize corrugated cases in short runs without being penalized by Minimum Order Quantities (MOQs). More recently, Grossman encountered an IP National Accounts Manager that works with a CPG company who also had an idea that lent itself to on-case advertising—though once again, in multiple SKUs each in relatively small quantities.

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This prompted Grossman and his installed at the customer’s location team to redouble their efforts in utilizing 4.25-in. print heads that the search for possible solutions, can be stitched together for larger and that’s what led them to GSI. print areas. Part of the package After one meeting in the GSI is the NOLabel black & white facility, IP recognized a great in-line digital printing, though a opportunity. brand owner wouldn’t necessarily “Their technology far surpassed have to install both NOLabel and anything we’d been seeing partly Colorize capabilities. It all depends because of its simplicity,” says on customer requirements. Beta Grossman. “There are so many testing is now underway, and in things brand owners can do Q2 of 2022 comes IP’s official The Seiko RC1536 print engine plays a key role in with this. And it’s not just SKU launch of Digital Print @ the both the NOLabel and the Colorize technologies reduction or on-case advertising.

Customer. Grossman is mighty that made their debut at PACK EXPO Las Vegas.

It’s the internal cost savings, excited about the prospects. warehouse reduction, and “For years,” says Grossman, eliminating obsolescence because the information pre“brand owners have been asking for SKU reduction where printed on their cases is no longer accurate. Or think about corrugated cases are concerned, and until now the stock seasonal promotional opportunities and other kinds of smallanswer from the industry has been this: ‘You can have it in volume customized graphics that a brand owner might want any color you want with current in-line ink-jet printing—as to do. Some of our customers have shied away from these long it’s black and the print doesn’t have to be particularly kinds of opportunities because the timing made it impossible legible.’ Digital Print @ the Customer from IP & GSI changes for them to get it through their systems. Now there’s a way.” everything. It enables SKU optimization and puts the ability What IP announced at PACK EXPO is an IP & GSI to seize seasonal promotional opportunities, for example, at exclusive offering called Digital Print @ the Customer the fingertips of the brand owner customer. And it means powered by GSI’s NOLabel and Colorize 180 & 360 we can produce what customers need without having to ask technologies. It’s a digital print solution designed to be them to meet an MOQ.” PW

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‘Home-grown’ Direct-to-Shape Printing

By Pat Reynolds, Contributing Editor

The self-described ‘super nerds’ who launched Juno DTS a few years back have come up with a modular and scalable way of digitally printing aluminum cans at 400/min.

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JULY 2022 DIGITAL PRINTING FOR LABELS & PACKAGING

irect-to-shape digital printing of cans is coming on A number of elements in the Juno DTS technology strong these days. But while most direct-to-shape fall into the “secret sauce” category, so they can’t be digital printing firms rely on printing technology from described here in any great detail. But a look at how cans a known OEM—Tonejet, or Hinterkopf, or LSINC—Juno DTS move through the process is still instructive. It’s also quite chose a more adventurous route when they launched their impressive considering how sophisticated such things as business a few years ago. Nick DiBlasi, Co-founder and CEO of Photo 1 the West Chester Township, Ohio startup, puts it this way.

“We’re a bunch of super nerds who decided to make our own direct-to-shape printing equipment. It’s homegrown technology, meaning we designed our own circuit boards and our own hardware and software to drive things. And from the start we fully intended to run it ourselves as a commercial printer as opposed to selling it as an OEM would do.

Taking objects that are not flat and printing on them is just not an easy thing to do, and we felt we had the best chance of success if we proceeded this way.”

One thing that is decidedly not home grown is the ink jet print head used by Juno. It’s the 1003 GS6 from Xaar. As for the UV-cured inks that are involved, these are considered proprietary. “We had to go through failure after failure before generating the right ink set,” says DiBlasi.

When asked what kind of resolution the Juno technology is capable of, DiBlasi says this: “The Cans exit the printing module by way of a SCARA robot equipped with customized end Xaar print head is 360 DPI. But effectors (A and B) that place cans two at a time on a rotating transfer wheel. Another because we have such fine control robot has end-of-arm tooling (C) that picks two cans at a time from the transfer over the surface being printed, we wheel by plunging to the interior can bottoms so that vacuum pickup cups can affix can in theory create any resolution themselves to the internal surface of the can bottoms. anyone would ever need.”

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parallel belts each run at progressively faster speeds. This causes the cans to be gently single filed as they make the turn that leads them into the digital printing station.

Cleaning is crucial

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The end-of-arm tooling that picks cans from the rotating transfer wheel places both cans in the carriers of the servodriven dual conveyor. Visible in the background behind the steel wall is a second robot that is putting cans into the dual conveyor’s other lane. depalletizing, palletizing, and robotic can handling are.

Depalletizing comes first, of course, and it’s done by a DPL-1000 high-level bulk depalletizer from Codi. It sweeps layers of cans—389 per layer in the case of 12-oz cans—onto a conveyor at overhead level. The cans hit a rail that causes them to gently make a 45-deg side-transfer with the aid of a second conveyor belt that moves faster than the mass conveyor. This narrows the mass flow to a manageable width. So when cans reach the vacuum decline belt, it’s easier to narrow them further.

Once cans reach floor level, they enter a 12-ft-long accumulation conveyor that advances them five across. At the end of this conveyor is another conveyor whose four

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Ahead of printing, however, some very important cleaning takes place. “The cans arrive coated with some of the oil or wax that the can makers use in the necking-in process,” says DiBlasi. “If you try to print on top of that, nothing good happens. So we have developed proprietary technology to clean and pretreat the cans.” Needless to say, this is one of those “secret sauce” areas that Juno is reluctant to talk about in any detail. The same reluctance applies where printing is concerned. What we do know is that printing is done on an intermittent-motion basis and that multiple modules are involved. It’s this multi-module characteristic that makes it possible to handle 400 12-oz cans/min. DiBlasi adds that a variety of sizes are being printed, including 16-oz cans, 16-oz slims, and 32-oz crowlers.

As soon as cans are printed, they pass through UV LED curing lamps supplied by Phoseon. Then the cans exit the printing module by way of an Epson SCARA robot equipped with an end effector supplied by system integrator IQaE. These end effectors use spring tension to grip the inside neck area of the can, so it’s a mechanical as opposed to vacuum principal. In Photo 1 on page 5, the end effector in the foreground (A) holds two cans that have just been pulled from the printer. The end effector in the background (B) has just deposited its two cans on the outfeed vacuum transfer wheel. These two end effectors constantly reciprocate back and forth to provide a steady supply of cans to the vacuum transfer wheel. This wheel rotates clockwise to a position where another Epson robot has end-of-arm tooling (C) that plunges to the bottom of two cans so that vacuum pickup cups can affix themselves to the interior can bottoms. The tooling then places both cans in the carriers (Photo 2) of the servo-driven dual conveyor supplied by Direct Conveyors.

“These end effectors are servo-driven,” notes DiBlasi. “So if we go to a new can size that requires a shorter or longer stroke to reach the can bottom, that change can be quickly made at the touch screen.”

What’s not visible in Photo 2 is the dual conveyor’s second lane, which is actually right behind the steel wall visible in the photo. What is visible in the background of Photo 2 is a second Epson robot that is putting cans into the dual conveyor’s other lane.

Each lane of the dual conveyor is independently driven by a closed-loop stepper motor from Oriental Motor. Each motor includes an integrated absolute encoder that produces highly accurate and repeatable positioning of each conveyor lane. This is critical in getting both conveyors to stop at a precise position for the robotic pick-and-place operation.

Held in the carriers of the dual conveyor, the cans at this point have been coated with a “highly cross-linked bake-on varnish” similar to what is used widely in the beverage can industry today. It safely traps the inks and protects against any scuffing.

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Custom design “Direct Conveyors did a great job of custom design involving servos and toothed timing belts that allow us to advance and accurately position the carriers just where they need to be for the next part of the process,” says DiBlasi. The next part he refers to is a stop at a station where a two-axis gantry robot from Macron Dynamics uses vacuum pickup to pick 20 cans and place them on the infeed belt of a HeatTek oven that cures the varnish.

Once relieved of their 20 cans, the 20 empty carriers travel back underneath the incoming flow of cans so they can be replenished with cans to be carried to the HeatTek oven. DiBlasi says that A two-axis gantry robot uses vacuum pickup to pick 20 cans and place them on the mastering this important transition into infeed belt of an oven that cures the varnish. the oven was not exactly a walk in the park.

“One big challenge is that the oven conveyor is motors responsible for the actuation so that the upward continuously moving,” notes DiBlasi. “Originally we were motion of the end effectors was compatible with the forward pulling the end effectors straight up once the cans were motion of the oven conveyor. “ Very helpful in this crucial released. But even though the oven belt is moving slowly, transfer of cans into the oven are the two VPL servo motors it still resulted in the cans being knocked over as the end from Rockwell that actuate the Macron gantry robot. “They effectors ascended. So we had to synchronize the servo have power and encoder running through the same cable,

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which really simplifies things,” says DiBlasio.

All that remains at this point is palletizing. Like depalletizing, it’s done on an overhead system from Codi.

According to DiBlasi, the palletizer is the result of a “unique development” by Juno and Codi. “It’s an excellent piece of equipment,” says DiBlasi. “It involves a vacuum elevator that turns the cans in this really neat S-shaped motion as it elevates them to the overhead palletizer.”

Now being finalized is the addition of an ionized air blast on the vacuum elevator that will clean out the inside of each can just before it gets palletized. “It’s not really essential,

because our customers clean the cans prior to filling,” notes DiBlasi. “But why not seize every possible opportunity to ensure cleanliness at every step along the supply chain?”

One other initiative soon to be offered by Juno will be well received by beverage companies who, for a wide variety of reasons, find themselves in possession of cans printed with the wrong graphics. Typically this kind of thing happens when the graphics were suitable for a seasonal or sports-related theme and within a few weeks or months they become obsolete. Such inventory, historically at least, will likely just go to a recycler, or perhaps some beverage companies might be able to put shrink sleeve labels over the graphics. But what Juno will do is “mask” them in yet another of their proprietary technologies so that they can then be digitally printed just as bright stock cans are printed.

DiBlasi is the first to admit that getting to the point where Juno’s at today, where digitally printed cans are rolling out the door, took considerably longer than he originally imagined.

Covid-related supply chain issues were part of the reason. But perhaps the biggest hurdle was the simple fact that direct-to-shape digital printing is extremely difficult to do—especially when your goal is to do it at 400 cans/ min. “One thing that helped us a lot was realizing early in the process that we weren’t just building a printer here,” says DiBlasi. “We had to build a complete system that took into account not just print heads and inks but also can handling and the all-important cleaning and varnishing steps. Had we just focused on the printer, we’d have gotten nowhere.” PW

Juno makes good use of vacuum conveyor transfer to bring unprinted cans down from the overhead depalletizer (above), and to move finished cans up to the palletizer (below).

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Weber’s Secret For Great Digital Labels?

Digital Press Operator Carlos Conde, 19 Years

Experience.

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