Benny and the (Ink) Jets

Benzion “Benny” Landa likes to shake things up. Already a legend in the (digital) printing industry, the Canadian-Israeli inventor is adding to his dossier. If Landa’s new, trademarked nanographic printing process turns the industry on its collective head as the launch of his Indigo digital press did 18 years ago, the Printing Industries of America may want to reconsider the inspiration for its annual Premier Print Awards “Benny” trophy. (Benjamin Franklin who?)

Now that the exhibitors have gone home and the drupa dust has settled in Dusseldorf until 2016, many people are scratching their heads, asking themselves, “What just happened?” Many had assumed that Landa, now 65, was resting on his laurels, enjoying his fortune. Hewlett-Packard, which bought Indigo 10 years ago for $880 million in cash and stock, would ask him to speak on occasion, out of respect and as an “advisor” to the company. This was a formality for the figurehead, the self-proclaimed “father of digital commercial printing,” and the face of Indigo – the little digital press that could.

It turns out that Landa is quite restless and not yet content to retire or even semi-retire. The innovator has been busy. “To me, the satisfaction isn’t the money,” Landa was quoted in the July 10, 1994, issue of Businessweek. “Creating an upheaval in a major industry is where I get my thrills from.” That should have been a clue to all of us.

Last month he revealed, “The Landa Nanographic Printing process is the result of 10 years of nanotechnology research. It is a true breakthrough that enables our presses to achieve amazing results.” Benny has always been all about the science of printing – and ink. In Indigo’s case, the secret formula is found in the specially formulated HP ElectroInk, which becomes a plastic film when it hits the heated “blanket” cylinder. Now, he is bringing a new consumable to the marketplace.

Secret Nano Formula

Landa is too smart to give away trade secrets. The man has 700 worldwide patents to his credit and counting. For the past decade, he has been developing and perfecting NanoInk, working in secret inside a lab with no windows near Tel Aviv. His team includes some 150 engineers and physicists. What we do know is this: His NanoInk is very tiny. Nanotech is the study of manipulating matter on an atomic and molecular scale. Particles are measured in nanometers, or billionths of a meter. What Landa Corp. and Landa Labs have discovered is that nano sized pigments have extraordinary qualities: They become amazingly powerful colorants, enabling an entirely new kind of digital printing.

At the heart of Landa’s Nanography (see sidebar for details) are water-based colorants that comprise ultra small pigment particles only tens of nanometers in size. The width of a human hair is about 100,000 nanometers. For a printer’s bottom line, this means less ink cost: Nanographic images measure only 500 nanometers in thickness — about half the thickness of offset images — which enables Landa NanoInk to produce the lowest cost-per-page digital images in the industry.

In addition to being microscopically small, nanographic print reproduction technology is different in another big way. Unlike inkjet, there is no need to heat the paper -- only the ink, which is jetted onto an intermediate blanket. The blanket is heated to evaporate water prior to substrate transfer. The use of this transfer blanket explains why Landa uses the term “ink ejectors” instead of the more commonly used “inkjet head.” Landa’s nanography process can operate at extremely high speeds, creating images with remarkable abrasion and scratch resistance, its developers said. Most notably, it can print on any off-the-shelf substrate, from coated and uncoated paper stocks to recycled carton; from newsprint to plastic packaging films — all without requiring any kind of pre-treatment or special coating as well as no post-drying.

A Printer’s Digital Press

At drupa, Landa unveiled six Nanographic Printing Presses: three sheetfed and three web-fed models. Featuring touchscreen displays that measure nearly 10 feet across, the user interfaces look and act like massive iPhones. The trio of sheetfed machines are designed for commercial printing and packaging applications, offering B3, B2, and B1 format sizes with a print speed up to 11,000 sheets per hour. The web presses cover a size 20.9 inches to 41 inches and claim to reach speeds up to 656 feet per minute. Landa said these printing machines cover all possible applications in commercial print, book and magazine printing, direct mail, labels, folded box and flexible packaging for food, pharmaceutical, cosmetics, and more.

Landa’s stated intent is to provide an offset press replacement that fits the way that existing print shops work. InfoTrends’ Jim Hamilton blogged that “the big differentiators that are intended to make the device attractive to commercial, packaging, and other printers is the speed (comparable to offset), low running cost, quick make-ready, small footprint, ease of operation, efficient drying, and the ability to print on a range of untreated substrates.”

Three key OEM sheetfed press manufacturers—Komori, manroland, and Heidelberg—are curious enough to adopt Landa’s new digital technology. In late April, the week before drupa opened its doors, a global partnership was announced whereby Landa will license Komori to manufacture and market digital printing presses for commercial and other printing markets, including packaging, using Landa’s Nanographic Printing process.

“There is … ever-growing customer demand for shorter and shorter run lengths as well as very short turnaround times,” said Yoshiharu Komori, chairman and CEO of the Japanese press manufacturer. “To meet these commercial printing market needs, we have embraced Landa Nanographic Printing as a powerful solution for our next generation sheetfed and webfed digital systems that use water-based inks.”

Landa added, “We have enjoyed an intimate relationship with Komori, which is our supplier of paper-handling platforms for our new Nanographic sheetfed presses. Komori was the first to be exposed to our technology and was the first to share our vision.”

Next on board was manroland sheetfed a few days later, on April 30. Raphael Penuela, executive VP and main board member, commented: “manroland sheetfed is committed to helping our customers meet the challenges of today’s printing industry with the most innovative and productive solutions. Clearly, that must include digital for mainstream printing.

“Landa Nanographic Printing technology offers the versatility of digital printing together with the qualities and speed of offset printing,” Penuela added. “It’s a great strategic fit. Our goal will be to deliver to our customers new digital printing solutions by converting their existing offset presses to Nanography.”

And on drupa eve, May 2, Heidelberg threw its proverbial hat into the nano ring as well. “As [a] market leader, innovator and integrator, we are keenly aware of our customers’ need for high volume production, cost effective printing of short runs, and quick turnaround times,” said chairman and CEO Bernhard Schreier. “It is those very needs that led us to develop our benchmark Anicolor systems and the very successful partnership with Ricoh on dry toner based digital presses. And it is those same needs that led us to embrace Landa Nanography for a new generation of digital presses for commercial printing.”

Landa added, “The Heidelberg-Landa alliance is a major step towards achieving our strategic goal of industry-wide adoption of Nanography for mainstream digital printing. As the market leader, Heidelberg’s adoption of Landa Nanographic Printing for its new-generation digital presses is a clear message to the entire market: For the foreseeable future, offset and digital will not only co-exist, but will complement one another—offset for medium-to-longer jobs and digital for short-to-medium run lengths, not to mention variable data printing. At last there is a digital printing technology that has both the speed and customer economics to fill that role – and Heidelberg is certainly well-positioned to take it to market.”

Historical Perspective

It wasn’t always this way for Landa, who now holds more than 170 U.S. patents. Once, they laughed at him and his new-fangled printing invention. That was back in 1993, a year before Indigo N.V. went public in the US and when skeptics scoffed at an early digital press iteration, called the E-Print 1000, because its toner had rubbed off the paper at GRAPH EXPO in Chicago. Landa got the last laugh, of course, when HP purchased Indigo nine years later.

Reports out of drupa 2012 indicated that the nanoprint samples shown were not impressive, even streaked. At this trade show, however, the one-time naysayers listened intently and did not laugh unless the gregarious Landa smiled, which he does a lot. He acknowledged that the presses are not yet ready for market and won’t be for at least another year.

“Nanographic Printing Presses are not intended to replace offset printing, ... [which] will continue to be the preferred method for producing run lengths of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands,” Landa explained. “But the market is demanding shorter and shorter run lengths – and that’s where Nanography comes in – to enable print service providers to produce those short to medium run lengths economically, at offset speeds. That’s what we mean when we say that Landa Nanographic Printing brings digital to the mainstream.”

Nanography 101: How It Works

At the heart of Nanography are water-based NanoInk colorants that comprise ultra small pigment particles only tens of nanometers in size. (A human hair is about 100,000 nanometres wide.) In comparison, good quality offset inks have a particle size of approximately 500 nanometers. Ink in nanographic images is about half the thickness of offset images — translating to less ink cost.

These nano-pigments are extremely powerful absorbers of light and enable unprecedented image qualities. Nanographic Printing begins with the ejection of billions of microscopic droplets of water-based Landa NanoInk onto a heated blanket conveyor belt. Each droplet lands at a precise location on the belt, creating the color image. As the water evaporates, the ink becomes an ultra-thin dry polymeric film.

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.

Because 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.

The ink will ship as a concentrate; just add tap water. Containers are designed to collapse as ink is consumed and are recyclable. While Landa Corp. claims that the water-based process is energy-efficient and eco-friendly, “Questions remain about the recyclability of @landanano printed materials and the lifecycle environmental impacts of NanoInk,” tweeted Don Carli, director of the Institute for Sustainable Communication in New York.