Time to stop the inkjet evolution: Lets get going with the inkjet revolution. The Inkjet Conference October 2018 Jason Remnant

Transcription

1 Time to stop the inkjet evolution: Lets get going with the inkjet revolution The Inkjet Conference October 2018 Jason Remnant 1

2 Presentation Contents A quick introduction to Xaar Evolution or Revolution Revolutionary Inkjet Technologies Summary & Conclusion 2

3 Xaar Company Overview 3

4 Evolution versus Revolution? 4

5 Evolution Versus Revolution - Society The process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed from earlier forms in the past A forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favour of a new system 5

6 Revolution versus Evolution - Technology REVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGY Rapidly replaces another technology Highly visible at time of implementation With high impact EVOLUTIONARY TECHNOLOGY Slowly developed from earlier versions in the past May not be visible at time of implementation but May have a large impact long term 6

7 Question? Where is Inkjet technology today? EVOLUTION? REVOLUTION? 7

8 Revolutionary Or Evolutionary Inkjet? Single Pass Printers MS Italy Lario KJ4B SPG Prints Pike - Samba Image courtesy of SPG Prints Packaging EFI Nozomi Seiko RC1536 KHS Xaar 1002 Advanced Manufacturing 3D HP Jet Fusion HP HDNA 8

9 Evolutionary or Revolutionary Printheads? XAAR 128 Shear Mode Shared Wall High viscosity Long Life XAAR mm width XAAR 380 XAAR 760 Greyscale 360 NPI XAAR 501/502 Optional Recirculation XAAR 5601 Si MEMS Drop trimming XAAR 1001 Side Shooter Recirculation Greyscale XAAR 1002 Improve PQ XAAR 1003 Improve PQ Reliability XAAR Increased productivity and resolution in ceramics and label High Laydown 9

10 Revolutionary Inkjet Technologies Recirculation at the nozzle Reliability and PQ High laydown Topological effects Functional printing Thin Film PZT Silicon MEMS Lifetime No Mechanical alignment Compactness Drop trimming Delta E / Uniformity 10

11 Ink Recirculation Technology Ink recirculated directly behind the nozzle improves latency Latency the abiltiy to fire a drop with increasing time between drops 11

12 Ink Recirculation improves Latency drop velocities of the first six drops of a burst of 10 drops as function of the flow rate. Idling time before the burst was 5 minutes. Test was conducted with a solvent ink in 1003 printhead 12

13 Ink recirculation removes air bubbles ink re-circulation acoustic resonator air bubbles in the channel 13

14 Effects of air bubbles in the channel Acoustic signal in an undisturbed ink channel (a) Pos: 0 mm (center) (b) Pos: 0.2 mm and with an air bubble in center (a), and off center positions (b) and (c). even small air bubbles detune the acoustic resonator and cause stop of drop ejection. (c) Pos: 0.6 mm 14

15 TF Technology TM Self Priming & Automatic Recovery 1.5 mm 70 mm Self recovery due to recirculating ink behind nozzle 15

16 High Laydown Technology Xaar 1003/2001 Texture up to 0.2mm at 25 m/min Spot varnish, metallic effects, deeply opaque whites Overprint protection coating Braille 16

17 Thin Film Technologies 17

18 Minimising print zone size Staggering printheads to increase print width but at cost of depth of array Print zone enlarges within the printer, typically at least twice the size of the printhead Media has to be controlled over larger area, more mounting requirements therefore higher mechanical costs Print Array Depth Overlap region 18

19 A Compact Printhead = Small Print Zone 4 Colours 1200 dpi in <190mm Overlap region Reduced demands on media transport Better colour registration between printheads and colour bars A smaller & cheaper printer 19

20 Software Only Aligned Printheads The printhead shape and a special arrangement of the nozzles allows multiple printheads to aligned in the X axis without the need for mechanical adjustment alignment techniques 3 Different nozzle pitches in a row 21.16µm +0.5µm 21.16µm 21.16µm -0.5µm X Axis 20

21 Intra-Printhead Vernier Alignment A Vernier design guarantees that 2 nozzles will be aligned within the overlapping region to within 1um Cross over point 21

22 Intra-Printhead Vernier Alignment Nozzles in the 1st printhead are not used after the cross over point, conversely nozzles in the 2 nd are not used before A single flawless stitch is achieve between printheads system works ±0.5mm 22

23 Determining the cross over point 56 nozzle overlap Each block moves the cross over position along 4 nozzles. Two heads perfectly aligned would put the change over in the centre. Nozzle change over 23

24 A Compact High NPI Printhead Silicon MEMS manufacturing Powerful fluidic chambers Closely packed along High density electrical connections High resolution / nozzles per inch printheads Small actuators with many nozzles Compact printheads 24

25 New actuator Thin Film PZT technology Silicon Ink Chamber Thin Film PZT Silicon Nozzles Applied Field PZT operates in ROOF/BEND MODE 25

26 Xaar 5601 Optimised PZT Passivation Insulation Electrode PZT (complex layer structure) Electrode Barrier Membrane Xaar Solgel deposition produces a uniquely multi layered PZT sandwich, different layers combine for a superior performance PZT actuator 26

27 Evolution of Efficient PZT Performance Traditional Solgel PZT - Epson Not used in industrial IJ? Industrial PZT e.g Xaar 1003 Best in class sputtered PZT Best in class Sol-Gel PZT 27

28 Sol-gel and sputtered: HALT data Sputtered PZT vs. Xaar Sol-gel 200 o C & 200 kv/cm Independent tested (by AixACCT) Lifetime of Xaar s sol-gel PZT based actuators exceeds the lifetime of any published and commercially available thin film PZT The degradation of capacitance after 1.5 x 1011 cycles was only 2% Measurements taken from actual inkjet devices 28

29 Optical density variation Smaller Drops Larger Drops 29

30 Nozzle Trimming Xaar AcuDrp 1. Xaar s AcuDrp (per-nozzle trimming) uses a hybrid hot/cold switch approach 2. Enables tune-ability, whilst minimising heat dissipation within the printhead (moving it to the drive electronics) 3. Customer is able to further scale or tune these values for their ink-type/use-case 4. (optional) For highest performance and power efficiency at high speed, compensation can be applied to correct for: frequency response (pixel history) crosstalk between channels (neighbouring pixels) other ink factors (viscosity change, latency) 30

31 Channel trimming capability: 3.6 m/s 0.6 pl Trim Values 31

32 Power of AcuDrp - Trimming example Print Direction 32

33 Improving uniformity using AcuDrp Print Direction 33

34 Revolutionary and Evolutionary Technologies Proven revolutionary technology Recirculation (reliability) New technologies Higher deposition levels (High Laydown) Applications Longer lifetime (PZT) - TCO Higher uniformity (Trimming) - PQ Software alignment - Vernier alignment Ease of use Compact printers (Z shape) Ease of use 34

35 In Summary.. Inkjet Revolutions have happened Evolving technologies will support & drive new revolutions The world is digitally aligning and can benefit from more inkjet revolutions 35

36 And finally a thought Thank-you 36