Tag Archives: DRUPA 2012

Benny Landa and nanoprinting

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There’s one more announcement from DRUPA (the 2012 edition of the International Trade Fair for prepress, premedia, printing, book binding, print finishing and paper converting held May 3 – 16, 2012) that I want to feature here, especially since it’s nanotechnology-related.  From the May 17, 2012 news item on Nanowerk,

Landa Corporation announced the details of its groundbreaking Landa Nanographic Printing™ Presses that are set to transform mainstream commercial, packaging and publishing markets. With output speeds comparable to offset presses and employing NanoInk™ colorants that create unprecedented image qualities, the Landa Nanographic Printing™ Press portfolio is set to fundamentally change printing as we know it.

Landa Founder, Chairman and CEO Benny Landa says, “Nanography™ is a new technology for applying ink to paper. In developing Landa Nanographic Printing we had to re-think and reinvent the printing press. The result is digital printing with remarkable performance – from a family of presses that share stunning ergonomic design, a small footprint and some of the most advanced user functionality available in the market.”

There is very little technical detail which is typical of Landa’s approach. As I recall from my days working for a competitor, Indigo, Landa’s last printing company, sold presses built on proprietary software. Any printer who purchased Indigo products was locked into the ‘Indigo world’ as there was no possibility of mixing and matching products from other manufacturers.

On that note, I notice this reference to a propriety ink in Landa’s latest product announcement (May 17, 2012 news item),

At the heart of the Nanographic Printing™ process are Landa NanoInk™ colorants. Comprised of pigment particles only tens of nanometres in size (1 nanometer is about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair), these nano-pigments are extremely powerful absorbers of light and enable unprecedented image qualities. Landa Nanographic Printing is characterised by ultra-sharp dots of extremely high uniformity, high gloss fidelity and the broadest colour gamut of any four-colour printing process.

Nanographic Printing begins with the ejection of billions of microscopic droplets of water-based Landa NanoInk onto a heated blanket conveyor belt. Each droplet of aqueous NanoInk lands at a precise location on the belt, creating the colour image. As the water evaporates, the ink becomes an ultra-thin dry polymeric film, less than half the thickness of offset images.

The resulting image is then transferred to any kind of ordinary paper, coated or uncoated, or onto any plastic packaging film – without requiring pre-treatment. The NanoInk film image instantaneously bonds to the surface, forming a tough, abrasion-resistant laminated layer without leaving any residual ink on the blanket.

Since NanoInk images are already dry, there is no need for post drying. Two-sided printing becomes simple and printed goods can be immediately handled, right off the press, even in the most aggressive finishing equipment.

Given that the printing industry is not experiencing growth these days, it’ll be interesting to see if this ‘nano’ approach is going to work. My last posting about the 2012 DRUPA focused on 3-D printing and paper loudspeakers (May 4, 2012).

DRUPA and 3-D printing

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The world’s biggest trade fair for the printing industry, DRUPA; International Trade Fair for prepress, premedia, printing, book binding, print finishing and paper converting,  is being held May 3 – 16th, 2012 in Düsseldorf, Germany. This year’s presentations include one about paper loudspeakers (from the May 2, 2012 news item on Nanowerk),

At drupa print media fair, … , the Institute for Print and Media Technology of Chemnitz University of Technology (pmTUC) presents new research results, which truly make you prick up your ears: Loudspeakers that have been printed with flexography on standard paper. The R&D group of Prof. Dr. Arved Hübler, head of pmTUC, is co-exhibitor of press manufacturer Windmöller & Hölscher KG (Lengerich) …

I’m always curious as to just how practical these things might be and, oddly, they don’t offer an audio file or video file demonstrating the loudspeaker’s effectiveness although there is this video about pmTUC’s participation in DRUPA 2012,

Here’s what they have to say about the paper loudspeakers (from the news item),

The printed paper loudspeaker is connected to an audio amplifier like a conventional loudspeaker. “Frequency response and hence sound quality are very good and the paper is surprisingly loud. Just the bass of the paper-based loudspeaker is a bit weak”, explains Dr. Georg Schmidt, senior researcher at pmTUC. The thin loudspeakers, which are printed in the laboratories of pmTUC, contain several layers of a conductive organic polymer and a piezoactive layer. According to project assistant Maxi Bellmann the loudspeakers are astonishingly robust and can be produced in a very cheap way as mass printing methods are used. The bottom side of the paper loudspeaker provides unused space on which coloured messages can be printed.

Prof. Hübler expects a broad range of new applications: The paper loudspeakers could, for instance, be integrated into common print products. As such, they offer an enormous potential for the advertising segment. “In addition, sound wallpapers and purely technical applications, e.g., distance sensors, are possible, because the papers are also active in the ultrasound range”, says Hübler and adds: “As printing allows for different formats and forms, there is the possibility to influence the generated sound waves.”

As I understand it, Hübler is predicting that the graphic arts/printing industry is going to change from adding ink to paper to something entirely different, printed electronics. There’s more about that in the May 2, 2012 news item.

This reminded me that in 2008, Xerox announced a major investment in Canada’s National Institute of Nanotechnology (NINT). Details were pretty fuzzy (from the Xerox June [?] 2008  press release),

In Canada’s first major public-private nanotechnology research partnership, the Xerox Research Centre of Canada (XRCC), NRC National Institute for Nanotechnology (NINT) and Government of Alberta will provide approximately $4.5 million for research and development of materials-based nanotechnology over the next three years.

The three partners will invest funds, human resources, and available infrastructures to create a research program and teams focused on developing commercially successful nanotechnology-based discoveries. Personnel from NINT and XRCC will collaborate on research projects at NINT in Edmonton, Alberta, and at XRCC in Mississauga, Ontario.

The funds will contribute to the hiring of eight to 10 scientists who will investigate materials-based nanotechnologies, including document- and display-related technologies. The research program, co-managed by XRCC and NINT, will allow access to Xerox’s experience in successfully commercializing technology to facilitate the market application of resulting inventions.

“This level of public and private sector partnership helps fuel the type of innovation that will keep Alberta, and Canada as a whole, strong and competitive in an increasingly global, knowledge-based economy,” said Doug Horner, minister for Advanced Education and Technology, Government of Alberta. “The investments from the Government of Alberta, Xerox and NINT will build a world-class nanotechnology research program that embraces the spirit of innovation, but also that of commercialization.”

XRCC was established in 1974 to develop the materials used by Xerox Corp. globally, and began nanotechnology-enabled research efforts several years ago. It has already developed successfully commercial materials, including ‘EA Toner’, a unique technology for making more cost-effective and environmentally efficient toner for printers. XRCC will now be able to expand its nanotechnology efforts.

While  a toner is mentioned, it’s not clear what inventions and materials they are trying to create either in the Xerox press release or Canada’s National Research Council (NINT is an NRC institute) June 8, 2018 news release. In any event, I cannot find any other announcements about this Xexox/NINT research project, which has now ended.