Marcus Timson, Future Print, talks to Nova Abbott about Kavalan. Nova Abbott heads up the marketing team for Taya, who provide the Kavalan range of sustainable printable media designed for wide-format printing. In this interview, we look at the issue of sustainability in wide format printing and what needs to change to make the entire sector more environmentally positive. TELL US ABOUT YOUR BACKGROUND I am originally from Taiwan and have worked and lived in the UK for over 15 years. I was introduced to print with my time at FESPA. I joined FESPA in 2007 to help launch FESPA Asia in Bangkok, w ..read more

Marcus Timson talks to Tim Phillips of IMI Europe. Tim Phillips has been involved in the development of inkjet since 2007 joining Xennia and more latterly running IMI Europe. Throughout his time in the market, he has shown a commitment to education and innovation. Ahead of IMI Europe in Berlin (7-10 October 2019), we talked inkjet, how he came to be involved and what his view is of the future! TIM, TELL US A LITTLE OF YOUR BACKGROUND AND HOW YOU MADE THE MOVE INTO INKJET. I studied science at school and university and always intended to be a scientist. I did a PhD in liquid crystals, which wa ..read more

When discussing taking over IMI Europe with Mike Willis, one of the things he explained to me was, that as an events company, the downside was that we were reliant on two budgets in the companies who send people to our events: the sales and marketing budget for sponsorships and people attending conferences, and the training budget for people attending our courses. And which are the two budgets most likely to get cut during a downturn or recession? Yes you guessed it… What Mike didn’t explain (and who would ever have guessed!) is that a far more existential threat would come from a pandemic. F ..read more

The key to a successful inkjet project is to consider the ink and the printhead in parallel at the start, and then test for feasibility. There are many inkjet heads on the market and lots of these can handle a wide range of chemistry types, but each and every one will have a guideline viscosity target. Trying to shoe-horn a UV ink into a MEMs head that does not have a heater, or to put a water-based 3D binder through a system that works best at > 10cP tend to lead to compromises, in either performance of the ink itself or the stability of the system.  Since formulation descriptions are ..read more

This article was originally published on https://futureprint.tech. Marcus Timson of Future Print talks to Patrick Smith, Senior Lecturer at the University of Sheffield, about his next challenge which is focused on a key issue for inkjet - ink printability. WHAT IS INK PRINTABILITY PATRICK? PLEASE EXPLAIN. The next phase for inkjet we think will be helped by going back to the fundamentals, to the printability of inkjet and also how the industry has moved onto water-based inks and non-porous substrates and ink lifetime. Ink lifetime is most important. The current academic definition of printabil ..read more

The EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Large-Area Electronics (CIMLAE) today announces a partnership with IMI Europe for the delivery and future development of its Innovations in Large-Area Electronics conference and exhibition (innoLAE). The conference, based in Cambridge, UK, focuses on new ways to make electronics, leveraging novel processes and new functional materials to provide electronic functionality in thin, flexible and transparent designs. The innoLAE 2020 Conference will be held on 21-22 January 2020 at the Wellcome Genome Campus Conference Centre in Cambridge. Wellcome ..read more

All the elements for great new businesses in digital functional printing are now in place. There are a vast array of new functional ‘inks’ providing conductivity as well as capability for sensing, light emission, light detection, charge storage and energy harvesting. There are digital printers capable of printing inks with a wide range of characteristics.  Novacentrix Drying and curing technology has improved immensely with many options including photonic flash sintering for certain types of material.  The barriers and encapsulation needed to protect the functional materials ar ..read more

This article was originally published on www.fmfuturenow.com. Inkjet’s Contribution to Productivity, Efficiency, Agility and Responsiveness is Compelling Yes it is. Inkjet has a role to play in industry 4.0 for sure. But in some cases progress may seem slow, the fact is in certain markets there is a resistance to adoption and in others secrecy prevents a wider knowledge of the advances and the advantages. In Moore’s book ‘Crossing the Chasm’, he outlines that with new tech, it’s a normal occurrence that some innovations just don’t leap across, it can take time. However, inkjet is already a pr ..read more

Doubts expressed about inkjet growth at the IMI Europe conference It can be argued that the most important part of strategic planning for your business is understanding the future. There are many ways of watching where markets are going, and an important one is conferences, such as the recent IMI Europe Digital Printing Conference in Berlin. While other events focus on components and technology, in Berlin future prospects, opportunities and challenges were, as always, the focus. Industrial print markets are stalling We are familiar with the inexorable decline in desktop home and office market ..read more

Precise control of meniscus pressure is critical to getting the best out of industrial inkjet systems. Too high a meniscus pressure can lead to air ingestion and starvation; too low a pressure can result in nozzle plate flooding; and pulsatility in meniscus pressure can lead to periodic effects in print output. All of these effects lead to irregular jetting and compromised print quality.   Stable meniscus pressure control is important to print quality Many current systems use a motor-driven diaphragm pump to provide the meniscus bias pressure. Such pumps are pulsatile and offer ..read more