Rotary inkjet printer for straight walled and tapered cylinders.

We’ve done it again..

We’ve optimized our latest direct-to-object technology, the Helix, to give our customers even more flexibility! Introducing Mirror UV inkjet Printing and Contour UV Inkjet Printing by the Helix.

Mirror Print- Print your graphic on any transparent substrate (such as glass) and see it from every angle! Our mirror print allows you to promote your company on the outside of the glass as well as on the inside.

Contour Print- Want to give your graphic some texture? Our Contour print can give your tumbler or pint glass a 3D effect. Choose which parts you want to jump out and the Helix will apply more ink to those areas. The end result is a one-of-a-kind print.

Introducing the next evolution of the rotary inkjet printer. The Helix is designed to print superior quality single or multicolored images for straight-walled and tapered cylinders – ideal for the drink-ware, cosmetic and industrial industries. Printing on bottles couldn’t be any easier! The Helix minimizes part setup time with a single, advanced quick-change tooling fixture designed for both cylinder or tapered parts.

Prepress and screen making are eliminated by this all-digital process. Simply import the image, choose the quantity for production and print directly to the product with user- friendly software. The Helix rotary inkjet printer achieves a superior balance between speed and image quality due to its patented Helix software which places 7 picoliter drops of ink precisely along the cylinder at extremely high speed. The Helix is a heavy-duty state-of-the-art machine designed and built by the Inkcups Now team in the U.S.A.

Tagless apparel pad printed by Inkcups

Say goodbye to your typical tear-away tags, label-free printing is here to stay! You may have seen popular t-shirt companies switch from a white sewn-in label to a print directly on your shirt. While many have sighed with instant relief, others have questioned the whereabouts of this tag that they intended to rip off anyway. The answer: companies have gone tagless.

There are numerous benefits of switching to Tagless; starting from the obvious increase in comfort for the consumer to ensuring your branding stays on the shirt and is not cutoff or destroyed. Once you have decided to “go tagless” there are a few methods to choose from: pad printing, heat transfer and screen printing. For this post, we will discuss pad printing.

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In pad printing, one of the key pieces of equipment to make an impression is the plate (also known as a Cliché). The plate holds the etch which then gets flooded with ink and eventually pressed onto the substrate with a pad. To etch a plate, you will either need to purchase a laser, exposure unit or outsource the platemaking where the same processes will be used. Each technique works differently and will depend on the type of etch you’d like to achieve

• Exposure Units-
  • Exposure units utilize UV light, photosensitive plates, film positives and other chemicals to engrave plates. This process has a number of consumables and takes longer to produce a plate than computer to print methods.
• CO2 Laser-
  • These lasers utilize a dot pattern perfect for larger logos and images. Polymer plates are used in this type of printing as CO2 lasers are not easily absorbed by metal. C02 lasers are much more flexible and allow you to choose from a number of plate materials. Additionally, they require very little maintenance.
• YAG Laser (Ytterbium or YAG fiber laser)-
  • A laser that has a wavelength that is 10 times smaller than the CO2 wavelength resulting in a smaller dot size. YAG lasers provide the highest detailed graphics by using a hatch pattern vs a dot pattern. This type of laser is primarily used in tagless applications where small lettering is required. Conversely, they are easily absorbed by metals but not easily absorbed by other materials.

Each method has its own pros and cons but the computer to plate techniques require the least amount of consumables and upkeep.

The XJET800 is the all new UV/LED industrial inkjet printer from Inkcups Now designed for high volume production demand. Featuring the latest in print head technology: the Ricoh Gen 5 print head allows for a higher quality print at a fraction of the time- effectively increasing production speed.

The XJET800 has a large print area of 800 x 600mm (31.5” x 23.6”) with a 10” adjustable vertical height. Much like the XJET, the XJET800 comes equipped with Inkcups’ patented programmable servo controlled load station (Patent No. 9,221,281 B2). Print an entire bed of parts while loading new parts to be printed. Never slow down production.

Printing is completely customizable, featuring: High-speed Uni- or Bi-directional printing, Variable Resolution settings up to 1200dpi and Variable dot size (7pl, 14pl, 21pl.) The ink system is state of the art, featuring: a highly opaque white, automatic white ink maintenance, automatic negative pressure ink maintenance system and a bulk ink system.

For more information about the XJET800, please visit: http://www.inkcups.com/equipment/industrial-uv-inkjet-printers/uv-inkjet-printer/Default.aspx 

There are many different manufacturers of inkjet printers out there- which leads many to the problem of ‘which one should I choose’? It is difficult to keep track of all this information so we did the dirty work for you! Check out this awesome chart outlining some of the important features you may be interested in researching:

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Outsourcing industrial printing projects is a common practice among small-medium sized companies but there comes a time when waiting on printed products, meeting certain minimums and sending artwork back and forth starts to waste more time than save money. Bringing printing inside seems like a difficult process but the flexibility it offers is tremendous. Once you have decided to take this step, the method to which you can print becomes the tough choice.

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The Helix® by Inkcups combines speed and quality. This industrial rotary inkjet printer flawlessly prints single or multi-colored images on straight and tapered cylinders. Its patented software places 7 picoliter drops of ink precisely along the cylinder at extremely high speeds. The best way to ensure full adhesion is to cure the substrate prior to printing. Curing can be done using primers or by flame treating the bottle. Common practice has seen that flame treating results in the best adhesion.

How does flame treating work?

Certain substrates (polypropylene, polyethylene, etc.) have low surface tension limiting the adhesion of inks. Flame treating manipulates the surface tension, increasing the movement of molecules and allowing ink to settle into the substrate. But it’s not as easy as flame and print. There are a number of factors to monitor. When starting up your flamer, you must make sure your flame is blue. This means the ratio of fuel to air is gas lean, thus oxidizing. An oxidizing flame will correctly manipulate your substrate’s surface tension. Additionally, you must monitor the time the substrate is spent under the flame.

How can this be easily done?

As explained above, there are many factors you will need to monitor constantly. Keeping a flame steady may be easy, however manually turning a bottle 360 degrees will not work. The easiest way to monitor this and make sure it is done correctly is to use some sort of tool to do so. Inkcups now offers the AutoFlame360 which automates this process. The AutoFlame360 boasts 8 palettes each with its own vacuum for securely suctioning bottles. Once the bottle reaches the flame, the palette turns 360 degrees allow the flame to evenly heat the whole bottle. At the end of the process, the hydraulics system pushes the bottle into the feeder.

Pad printing technology has taken the industry by storm but as with anything, there is always room for improvement. Although this process can print on almost all substrates (plastic, silicone, cotton, etc.), there are a few external factors that prevent a clean print. To combat this issue, many companies have introduced a pad printer that incorporates a cleaning mechanism. Here are a few ways a pad cleaning pad printer can help you:

1. Removes environmental debris from pad
   • In some production facilities, mainly apparel factories, there is a lot of excess “sediment” in the air. Since it is everywhere, it can also make its way to the pad thus leaving impressions of this external debris on your substrate. Using the pad cleaning function, your pad is cleaned after every print.
2. Removes silicone ink from the silicone pad
   • Silicone ink sticks to a silicone product after it is cured but some ink will still stick to the pad pre-curing. If you do not clean the pad, new ink will be applied on top of this ink and cause a misprint. Currently, pad printing techs will clean the pad after a few cycles, but a pad cleaning pad printer can automate this whole process. You can program it to clean the pad after a number of prints or after every print.

Inkcups has utilized their extensive knowledge in pad printing and applied this technology to their B100 pad printer to bring the B100-PC. The B100-PC utilizes all Inkcups supplies- Versacup©, ink, plates, etc. but brings automation to the forefront. This revolutionary machine prints one color images up to 4.25 inches tall and is capable of using photopolymer, steel and laser plates.

Inkcups will be presenting new technology at the 2017 PPAI

Inkcups Now, Corp. (Danvers, MA) are featuring the most groundbreaking pad printing and inkjet technology at the 2017 PPAI Expo in Las Vegas, NV January 10-12. Located at booth #6955, Inkcups will show numerous machine demonstrations and will have our expert team available for any questions. Don’t miss out! This years’ line-up of state-of-the-art industrial printers include:

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Buy any amount!

At Inkcups, we tailor our equipment, supplies and services to fit the needs of our customers. We never put unfair minimum order quantities on our products because we know you will enjoy the high quality supplies we provide and we are confident in our strong customer relationships. Going along with this philosophy, we would like to re-announce that our supplies (plates, cups, inks, etc.) have no minimum order quantity! Buy 1, 2, 5, 500 or more!

For more information, call (978)646-8980