Print, Electronics, and the Internet of Things You’ve likely heard the phrase “the Internet of Things,” but what is it, and does it have any relevance to the printing industry? The Internet of Things (IoT) is playing a key role in this year’s Industrial Printing Pavilion, so the answer is a resounding “yes.” At the end of 2013, Gartner, Inc., forecast that the Internet of Things—which in its definition excludes PCs, tablets, and smartphones—will grow to 26 billion units installed in 2020, a nearly 30-fold increase from 0.9 billion in 2009 (www. gartner.com/newsroom/id/2636073). Other forecasters have been at least as bullish. The Internet of Things can comprise a number of things, but among the most relevant examples for our industry are smart tags and labels such as those used in food and pharmaceutical packaging and shipping. Perishable drugs and foods need to be maintained at a certain temperature, and thus require a way of determining if there has been any variation in temperature. A printed smart tag can keep track of the temperature during shipping, and a smartphone can access this log and ensure that the “cold chain” wasn’t broken. Ultimately, the IoT is about printing something more complex than just ink on paper, and exploiting opportunities in printed electronics and other sensors that comprise the backbone of the Internet of Things can require more than just the ability to buy a new piece of equipment. However, that is not to say that it’s impossible to get into. The Industrial Printing Pavilion and the Future Print Experiential Lab by FlexTech (Booth 4436) offer a crash course in how to begin to get started in this fast-growing new type of print application. “There are so many opportunities for creating products that are part of the Internet of Things that are printed with electronic ink rather than your traditional methods,” says Heidi Hoffman, Senior Director of FlexTech Alliance. “And they can be using the same equipment with some sight modifications.” The Future Print Experiential Lab is concentrating on two areas of printed electronics and IoT-related applications. The first are medical “patches” that consist of printed sensors and conductive lines that convey a signal to the communication portion of the patch, which can use RFID, NFC, or some other technology. Virtually every part of the patch can all be printed. At present, the only element that needs to be manufactured separately is the integrated circuit that provides the “brains” for the patch. Another broad category of IoT applications is what Hoffman calls “structural health monitoring,” where, she said, “you print a substrate that goes on the wing of an airplane and monitors the ‘health’ of that wing, the forces acting on it, and when it needs maintenance. You can put a large sensor array on practically anything; a wing, a building, a bridge, a car, or a motor.” Data collected by the sensors can be sent to a database or even processed on the spot, with a notification sent if there is a problem. The Future Print Experiential Lab offers presentations and hands-on demonstrations of a wide variety of printed electronics and IoT-related applications, as well as what opportunities exist today—and will exist tomorrow—for commercial printers. Rethinking Book Publishing with Inkjet By 2018, U.S. production color inkjet page volume will exceed that of digital toner color, according to InfoTrends. The reasons? Inkjet brings to a higher volume band all the advantages of digital printing, including personalization, electronic collation, just-in-time manufacturing, workflow automation, highspeeds, and productivity. There’s no doubt that inkjet is becoming a leading technology as print service providers (PSPs) look to grow profitability and find new ways to meet the diverse demands of their customers. One area that presents a strong inkjet growth opportunity is book publishing. In the book industry, new business models have appeared with the growth of retail outlets, online bookstores and pay-to-read options on the Web. As these new models alter consumer behavior and challenge PSPs to reinvent traditional methods to support a new wave of thinking, the industry had to rethink the book supply chain and technologies to help providers adapt to better serve customers. Where there is transformative change, there is an opportunity. In book publishing, that opportunity is inkjet. Book publishing can benefit from inkjet technologies in the following areas: • Reducing cycle time for on-demand production • Production of more specialty and self-published titles • Risk reduction for inventory, warehousing, and returns • Automating workflows to keep the press running with minimal operator time • Opening new revenue streams by better managing reprints, backlists, and out-of-print editions • Accelerating time to market • Automating digital publishing for mobile, web, social, and print using solutions like Xerox (Booth 613) FreeFlow Digital Publisher. When PSPs are considering the shift to inkjet, acquisition cost is a big factor that comes into play. Every print shop’s economics are different depending on customer mix, workflow, pricing, substrates, manufacturing capabilities, and operating environments. This makes each result and equation for inkjet acquisition a little different. PSPs can see how this technology may work for them and their customers by conducting a total cost of operation (TCO) analysis with and without an inkjet solution. It all boils down to profitability, overall benefits for the print shop and the value proposition PSPs can offer to customers. One big challenge faced by book publishers is increasing the number of titles without adding strain to working capital. They’re in need of a solution that can produce titles efficiently in the right quantities at the point of need, so millions of dollars in working capital doesn’t get tied up in unnecessary inventory. With inkjet solutions, PSPs can minimize inventory holding with digitally-printed, shorter-run lengths. This will help free up capital and drive more titles to be printed more often and at the appropriate, often lower, quantities. Today’s high-volume inkjet printers operate in a highly complex, ever changing marketplace. That’s why providing the right combination of press, workflow, finishing, and support services is so critical. Meeting the exact needs of customer business models means technology is flexible enough to move with the market and positioned for growth. It gives users the best of both worlds and no longer forces the sacrifice between speed and volume for image quality, color, or personalization. Inkjet technology is closing the gap between offset and digital print—revolutionizing the way print providers do business, especially in the book publishing space. HP PageWide Technology Powers the Fastest Large Format Color Band Monochrome Printing Portfolio on the Market ased on HP (Booth 1202) Thermal Inkjet Technology and HP pigment inks, HP PageWide Technology offers high quality at high printing speeds. This technology consists of thousands of nozzles on a stationary print bar and spans the width of the page, enabling one-pass printing. It is scalable to meet a wide range of application and performance requirements and offers robust operation with economical print production. In 2006, HP introduced a 4" Thermal Inkjet printhead platform that has been used in wide writing systems in HP’s large format Latex Printers and in HP Color Inkjet Web Presses. HP Scalable Printing Technology allows this printhead to be customized to a wide range of applications including different drop weights and inks. HP PageWide XL series Printers have operating and performance requirements that are not optimally met by HP’s 4.25" printhead platform. The 4.25" printhead delivers one or two colors of ink, and making a wide four-color printer by stacking these printheads along and across the web of printing material requires a print zone larger than desirable for a technical graphics printer. Both the strengths and limitations of earlier generations of wide printheads provided an opportunity to develop a new HP printhead platform: the HP PageWide Printhead with a 5.08" (127.5 mm) print swath. From initial conception, HP’s 5.08" printhead was designed to be an element of a scalable writing system that could power a wide range of printing solutions. Performance objectives and features for HP PageWide Printheads were driven both by the needs of HP PageWide XL Printers and extensibility to future HP PageWide printing solutions, including: • High sustained drop rates for reliable print quality in high productivity applications; • Reliable drop ejection to reduce print quality defects from “nozzle outs;” • Extended time between service station cycles for sustained productivity; • High print density in high-speed, one-pass printing for high black/color saturation at high productivity; • Long life to reduce intervention rates and provide lower total cost of operation in high duty-cycle applications; • Improved dot placement accuracy to meet the requirements of technical graphics; • Stackability for a more compact 4-color print zone with the versatility to support a range of print widths; • Compact print zone for better media control, precise color to-color alignment, and to reduce printer size. With these features, HP PageWide Technology achieves productivity higher than can be obtained with scanning printhead systems. HP PageWide Technology in the new family of HP PageWide XL Printers is the first implementation of a third-generation HP Thermal Inkjet printing platform that will form the foundation for HP solutions, offering highspeed, reliable, robust, and economical printing on a wide range of media. HP PageWide Technology solutions are scalable and versatile in design and performance to meet the needs of a broad range of applications in office, commercial, and industrial printing. 38 September 15, 2015 | GRAPH EXPO Official Show Daily | PrintingNews.com
GraphExpo Show Daily September 15 2015
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