Custom Printing: Direct to Object Inkjet Printing

I read an article today in Print+Promo magazine about direct to object custom printing, and then I followed up with further research online. The idea intrigues me: printing directly on an object, like a mug, or a metal water bottle, or, as the article notes, even a football helmet. Label-less printing. The idea is not completely new to me. After all, I’ve seen videos of mugs and bottles (essentially regular cylindrical shapes) being spun around in a jig while images are screen printed onto the products. I know you can also use flexographic technology to print directly on objects.

However, Xerox’s direct to object inkjetting leaves room for endless personalization. After all, with a silkscreen or flexo press, you print the same image again and again, but with an inkjet printer, you can vary each and every image.

The Xerox Press Release and the Printer Specs

The article was entitled “Xerox Introduces New Direct to Object Inkjet Printer.” It seems to be a press release from Xerox. However, if you go searching for the article online you will also find useful product literature from Xerox to amplify your knowledge. The articles make some intriguing claims:

1. 1. The printer can “spray ink on objects as small as bottle caps and as large as football helmets.”

1. 1. The Xerox equipment can print on plastic, metals, ceramics, and glass.

1. 1. “The machine is able to print on smooth, rough, slightly curved or stepped surfaces at print resolutions ranging from 300 to 1,200 dpi.”

1. 1. The equipment is “compatible with virtually any type of ink chemistry, including solvent, aqueous, and UV inks.”

1. 1. The design of the object “holder” is such that it can be easily adjusted for different sized objects, up to one cubic foot in volume (irregular shapes, too).

1. 1. You can print an area 2.8” x 13” in dimension using ten inks (cyan, magenta, yellow, black, white, plus five specialty inks).

1. 1. You can print up to 30 objects per hour.

1. And as the final benefit, this is a “complete packaging solution [that] can eliminate the need for labels.”

(All quotes are from “Xerox Introduces New Direct to Object Inkjet Printer” or Xerox’s website.)

So, What Does This Mean For Printing?

Granted, this is relatively new technology, but the specifications promise a lot:

1. 1. The variance in the size of objects the printer can accept, along with the flexibility and ease of adjustment of the object holder, should make this printer easy to quickly configure for a multitude of objects.

1. 1. Since the printer will accept any kind of ink, you can eliminate problems with ink drying on a slick surface by using UV inks. Therefore, you can quickly print, dry, and hand off to customers items like mugs and water bottles—while they wait. This would be ideal for promoting a brand at a trade show.

1. 1. At 2.8” x 13”, the image print area is rather large, so your logo or message will be big and visible.

1. 1. This process can eliminate labels. This is a big one. On the one hand, everything I have read says that the growth areas in commercial printing are labels, packaging, and large format printing. Demand for these services is growing quickly year over year, and yet this technology might eliminate the need for custom labels. I’m not sure this would be true in all cases, but the technology is ideally positioned in a growth industry. In addition, this equipment will benefit the aesthetics of custom label printing, since printing directly on an object with no label leaves an integrated, elegant, and organic impression. The printed image becomes part of the object, not just a sticky piece of printed paper affixed to a product.

1. 1. In all the instances where I’ve seen custom screen printing used to decorate objects, the print surface has needed to be mostly flat (even if it is the round surface of a mug, you can still roll the cylindrical mug to provide a flat surface for the custom screen printing). However, according to Xerox’s product literature, the longer distance from the inkjet print heads to the substrate will allow for printing on irregular surfaces (the article references curved and slightly stepped surfaces). This will greatly expand the number and kinds of items onto which this direct to object inkjet equipment can print.

1. 1. The ability to use ten inks will extend the color gamut dramatically, presumably allowing designers to match almost any PMS color.

1. The speed is respectable. Compared to screen printing (once the time has been spent to set up the process), digital printing can be rather slow. However, the ability to print 30 objects per hour makes this equipment more appropriate for longer digital production runs.

Time will tell, but I do think this may be a game changer.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 27th, 2017 at 7:11 pm and is filed under Digital Printing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.