Inkjet Starting Over: Stream Technology
Posted on Mon, Aug 30, 2010
by Eric Owen
We all know most inventions don’t succeed. Like new restaurants and start-up businesses, most inventions are doomed to fail, disappoint or be ignored.
If you want to build a better mousetrap, the best strategy is usually to take the best existing mousetrap technology and improve on that. There’s less risk and more chance of success.
So why did Kodak go to the trouble of inventing a whole new approach to inkjet technology, rather than refining one of today’s proven systems? Why take the risk?
There’s a simple answer to that. We were prepared to play for high stakes because we saw a way to transform a large part of the printing industry.
Not just change it or make it slightly more efficient.
Transform it.
If we could build an inkjet press that delivered offset-quality color, great productivity, and a cost basis that was directly comparable to offset, our customers could start to migrate offset work onto inkjet. And if the costs really were the same, then they’d be getting the advantages of digital for free.
They’d be able to print variable data and make use of digital’s incredible short-run flexibility without compromising on quality or having to charge premium prices.
It was a seductive idea. But it was a million miles from any starting point that could be reached with existing continuous inkjet or drop-on-demand systems. To get speeds up and prices down so dramatically, we’d need a new technology that could deliver ink droplets many times faster than ever before.
Kodak’s Stream is that new technology.
Traditional continuous inkjet breaks up the flow of ink using a vibrating crystal in the nozzle to form droplets. It’s like tapping the end of a garden hose to break the flow. Unwanted droplets get an electrostatic charge and the charged droplets are steered away by a deflection bib and collected for recycling.
Stream technology uses solid state heaters that flick on and off instantly, changing the surface tension of the high-pressure ink stream and introducing “kinks” that make it break into droplets of different sizes. Big drops land on the paper, exactly where they are aimed, while the smaller drops, where no ink is wanted on the paper, get blown aside by a continuous airflow system.
This is really fast stuff. Stream technology can already form droplets 400 kHz 2.5 times as fast as regular continuous inkjet systems and ten times as fast as the theoretical maximum for drop-on-demand. And there’s plenty of headroom for pushing the speed up. We’re just at the start of what this can do.
Which means, of course, that we’re just at the start of what printers and marketing service providers can do with this equipment.
We’re just at the start of the era when migrating color work from offset to digital is possible, practical, and affordable.
For thousands of printing companies, all round the world, this is the moment the rules were changed – in their favor.