Several factors are driving the growing need for coding / marking systems for industrial products. The main drivers are regulatory requirements, traceability requirements and the display of information, such as expiration dates for consumers. Many manufacturers are using Continuous Inkjet (CIJ) printers to mark and encode their products. These printers offer a cost-effective solution with superior print quality. And, this type of printing technology is suitable for a wide range of applications. Some of the industries that use industrial inkjet printers are: automotive, beverage, construction products, consumer goods, electronic products, glass products, pharmaceuticals and medical, plastics and rubber articles.
1. Material / Substrate Type: The type of media to be printed will determine the type of ink to be used in the printer. Therefore, if you are printing on a porous (absorbent) surface such as paper, cardboard, textiles, carpets, nonwoven fabrics, wood, organic surfaces, etc., then the type of ink will be different than if you are printing a non- porous (non-absorbent) such as metal, glass, ceramics, stone, plastic, rubber, sheets, etc. Therefore, you should know what type of substrate the printer can print.
2. Shape of the object: Printing on a small diameter cable or tubing may require a print head other than printing on a juice carton.
3. Printer ink characteristics: you should consider 3 important aspects of the printer ink:
Ink Color: Will you use your corporate colors to mark your products? Will the color of marking ink be incorporated into the general design of the product packaging? Will the variants of your products differ with the color of the ink?
Ink Type: Does your application require safe ink for food?
Ink Drying Time: If you have a fast moving production line where product brands need to dry quickly before the next line operation, then you need a quick drying ink.
4. Image size and quality: how much information do you need to mark on your product? Will there be coding in the primary or secondary packaging or both? Should printed information be machine readable? What is the size of the area to print? Answering these questions will help you determine the print resolution and the required character size that the printer is capable of producing.
5. Line speed: To avoid bottlenecks in your production line, you need to know the line speed of your production line. A common measure of printer line speed is meters per second. Then, among the various measures of the speed of the production line, make sure you know the speed of your line in meters or feet per second.
6. Pre-printed packaging inventory: An industrial marking system can help reduce or eliminate the need to maintain an inventory of pre-printed packages, which must be stored and administered for each unique product. And, as you can print on demand, the package marks can be changed without having to discard the pre-printed packaging.
7. Manufacturing Environment: How Many Manufacturing Lines Do a Printer Need? Will the printer be installed in a humid or dusty environment and subject to vibrations and temperature fluctuations? Can the print head resist occasional bumps produced by products colliding on it? Can you place the printer on a network of printers and control it over a network? A networked solution helps to reduce the amount of time that needs to be spent in configuring and maintaining the message.
8. Data to be printed: what type of data should be coded or marked on the packaging of your product. Do you need to print static data, such as company information and product name? Will there be dynamic variable data like the date? time, counter, shift code, serial numbers, unique device ID (UDI), etc.
9. Print Head Technology: Depending on your manufacturing line, you may need to tilt the printer's print head at an angle to mark the product at the required location. In this case, a printing system with a remote printhead might be an appropriate choice. In addition, since the print heads should be cleaned periodically, it is important to consider the speed and process for cleaning the print head.
10. Ease of operation and configuration: To minimize your costs, check if the printing system is essentially plug and play and requires a minimum amount of user configuration and training for the system to work.