SMT Digital is a versatile company that is using its manufacturing skills to open up new opportunities in industrial print.
Based in Oyonnax, in the Rhône-Alpes region of eastern France, SMT has been established for more than 25 years. It is able to offer a variety of printing, marking and decoration processes including screen printing, pad printing for more complex shapes, and hot stamping to allow the application of print onto a range of products including industrial parts, perfumes and cosmetics. It also offers laser engraving.
SMT Digital, its subsidiary dedicated to digital printing, also develops its own digital printing machines which can print on flat and flexible materials for applications such as stickers, labels and licence plates and machines for printing on cylindrical objects such as bottles, caps and packaging.
The company ensures that it invests in new technologies, and has recently worked in partnership with Industrial Inkjet Ltd (IIJ) to align its creative engineering and materials handling skills, with IIJ’s competence in inkjet printhead development. This has seen the introduction of an inkjet system, the Jura, which SMT Digital has used to successfully print ‘label-less’ cosmetic products including Stella McCartney’s range of perfumes.
Being able to print ‘label-less’ applications helps to cut cost and also gives the finished product a high quality, stylish look.
The technology
The inkjet technology behind the Jura allows high speed, high quality digital printing directly onto products of unusual shapes and sizes. The Jura can print on all the usual plastic materials needed for these sorts of applications including Polyethylene (PE), Polypropylene (PP), Polystyrene, Polycarbonate and ABS. The Jura is also able to print on others materials as well wood, steel, aluminium and glass. These can be either flat surfaces or with a curved or slightly raised face up to 6 mm.
The Jura will print in colour, with or without white support and with or without overprint varnishes.
So, how does it work? The machine is equipped with a bespoke printhead array from Industrial Inkjet. These can be in one or more arrays of multi-line heads, which are controlled by the on-board computer. The printing unit comprises a pre-printing module, white printheads, colour printheads, and a UV curing module. High print quality and consistency is obtained through the printheads firing micro ink droplets of only 6 pl.
The Jura is available in two standard printing widths – 70 and 140 mm (and up to 700 mm with a special development) – and runs at up to 400 mm per second. It can handle products up to 3000 mm long by 300 mm in height.
As well as the standard machines, SMT Digital can develop more bespoke systems to suit customer requirements and depending on the types of materials that are required to run the systems can offer a choice of surface treatments.
Four different head arrays can also be employed including colour, white, varnish and monochrome.
The quick drying inks (under UV) were specifically developed for this type of printing and offer brilliant colours. They are stored in two litre reservoirs and levels are controlled electronically, with a low level warning system in place to ensure lower levels of downtime. Printing can continue while inks are topped up.
The Jura is proving so successful that it has recently won the 2012 Artinov award for Innovation with its new machine for cylindrical printing. This award was set up for small businesses that exhibit high levels of technological development, innovation and economic development.
Industrial Inkjet
IIJ works with a range of system manufacturing partners. The company develops a range of inkjet print engines of various sizes from 36 to 352 mm based on Konica Minolta piezo inkjet printheads.
It offers colour and monochrome systems, as well as systems for spot varnish, white inks or special security inks.
Its colour range currently comprises the ColourPrint 72, 142, 282 and 352 the numbers designating the print width. New models are being added regularly. It also offers HQ versions of the machines, which run at higher resolution (up to 720 x 720 dpi) and higher speeds and has just launched new ‘i’ versions which print at 75 metres per minute linear speed. The machines are ideal for applications such as pharma (carton and blister pack), labels, ID cards, primary and secondary packaging.
These engines are suitable for integration into web and sheetfed presses as well as conveyor lines or robotic systems for direct product decoration.
There are many features that make the print engines operator friendly and easy to use and maintain. These include a printhead unit that slides out for easy cleaning and an ink supply that can be topped up while printing.
Full variable data software is included that allows the user to handle applications such as barcodes, numbering or addressing. The systems are also capable of printing full colour images from a database in real time.
IIJ is happy to work with customers to develop bespoke systems with different speeds, print widths, print resolution, inks, or number of colours and companies such as SMT Digital are an ideal fit, where innovation and creativity in technology can open up new opportunities for printers.
