Beyond the Hype

Printing company owners are seeking new markets as the pandemic affects their businesses. They are assessing the constantly fluctuating environment, one that requires frequent pivots, driven by seen and unseen economic factors. Many owners are evaluating an opportunity that leverages their inkjet printing expertise - digital direct-to-shape (D2S) printing.

The printing industry has been in decline for years with few bright spots. The pandemic exacerbated the trend with U.S. printing capacity utilization declining from 93.9% a year ago to 72.4% in May 2020. One result is that printing companies with unfilled capacity are chasing each other’s customers just when those prospects are retrenching because their sales have declined. Rather than competing for print jobs based on price in a saturated market, D2S printing is a bright spot worth investigating. 

D2S printing is the analog or digital imaging onto a three-dimensional item’s surface. Pad and screen printing are the most common forms of analog D2S printing and are particularly well-suited to long runs of the same image. Digital D2S printing typically uses jetting or dye-sublimation technology to image the item. It enables both the customization of every image and economical production of very short runs of identical copies. 

D2S printing is not 3D printing, which is an additive process that creates physical objects from metal, plastic or composite materials. Think of it this way: 3D printing makes physical items while D2S printing places images onto three-dimensional goods no matter how the pieces are made. 

The appeal of D2S for printing companies is that the market ranges from promotional products to household furnishings to industrial panels. At Deluxe (Shoreview, Minn.), sales of short-run printed drinkware alone totals more than $53 million. No matter what markets you typically serve, many of your customers will benefit from D2S printing of the consumer, business or industrial items they use or sell.

Monadnock Insight’s “Digital Direct-to-Shape Printing Spectrum” illustrates the breadth of the market opportunity for printing companies. The Spectrum has both product value and product complexity (see Figure 1). 

Figure 1. The Digital Direct-to-Shape Printing Spectrum

Source: Monadnock Insights

Product value refers to the worth that a finished good has for the buyer. An example of a low-value product would be 250,000 injection molded items that were pad printed with identical images. A high-value product would be a limited run of 25 3D-printed pieces that are inkjet printed with personalized images.

"Product complexity" refers to the degree to which items are customized. Uniform applies to items produced in the tens of thousands of identical pieces, each with the same image. Moving along the axis toward the middle, we find those pieces printed in smaller lots with different images. "Unique" refers to items produced in minimal quantities, possibly made with 3D printing, with different images printed on each one. 

The two axes divide the Spectrum into four quadrants. Products in the “mass market” and “economy” quadrants use analog printing, such as pad printing, to image large numbers of uniform items. As the products become more complex, items falling into the “creative” and “premium” quadrants are imaged with digital technology in minimal quantities, including orders of one unique piece.

The D2S Printing Spectrum enables company owners, marketing managers and technical staff to understand not only the digital D2S printing opportunity but also the complexity of the market. For example, printers in the fragmented “mass market” focus on uniform, low-value items in which they hope to make up for slim profit margins with high volumes. However, the competition from suppliers located in countries with low wages is fierce.

On the other hand, the “premium” market focuses on high complexity, high-value items with potentially high-profit margins. However, to earn attractive margins, the company management, production personnel and sales staff must all thrive on frequent, short runs of items that are challenging to produce.

Regardless of how a company enters the D2S printing market, they may already have the in-house talent needed to branch out from inkjet printing to digital D2S printing. But beware that while digital D2S is similar to inkjet printing of the papers and other two-dimensional substrates, there are substantial differences when printing a 3D item.

Whether consumer goods or industrial products, 2D inkjet printing and digital D2S printing similarities include:

• Determining the compatibility of the ink and coatings with the substrate
• Orienting, aligning and controlling the substrate as it passes the printheads
• Controlling how the droplets will land on the substrate
• Incorporating operational constraints into the image design

Not surprisingly, manufacturers of 2D inkjet printheads also see the D2S printing market as a bright spot. Technology providers and systems integrators include Engineered Printing Solutions, Fujifilm, KHS Group, Konica Minolta, Machines Dubuit, Memjet, Seiko Instruments, Velox, Xaar and Xerox.

However, digital D2S printing is technically more challenging than 2D inkjet printing. Printing onto shapes may require printing on vertical, often rotating, surfaces, from above or at an angle. Press operators are dealing with gravity and airflow, as well as the varying distances from the printhead to the object that are not issues when 2D printing. Additionally, to achieve image quality and durability, the D2S printing inks must be formulated for the specific substrate and subsequent uses of the item.

Figure 2. Xaar 1003 Printhead

Source: Xaar

“Variations in the printhead performance are amplified when printing on a shaped surface—and are exaggerated even further under fast speeds," said Chuck Pemble, business development manager at Xaar, a manufacturer of printheads and software used in D2S printing. "To achieve high print quality, it is important to reduce the variation as much as possible.”

To this end, Xaar developed its TF Technology for ink re-circulation and Hybrid Side Shooter printhead architecture to counteract the effect gravity has on inks by preventing particles from settling and clogging the nozzles while enabling difficult varnishes to print with predictable quality.

Printing companies should consider equipment manufacturers who have demonstrated expertise in building presses for the desired product range. Even then, either custom or modified commercially available D2S printing machines will often be necessary.

The global pandemic has brought hidden supply chain weaknesses to the forefront. Empty grocery store shelves are an example of how digital D2S printing can help solve a consumer goods company’s supply chain issues. 

Think about the drinks, ranging from water to soda, found on store shelves. Cost-effective, long-run container and package printing means there are warehouses full of corrugated boxes and containers waiting to be used in the drink manufacturing process. The ingredient and nutrition information printed on them is highly regulated. 

What happens when the consumer goods company must substitute an ingredient when supplies of the pre-printed ingredients are unavailable? The company must reformulate its drinks and change its packaging. Just as inkjet printing enables the packaging to be updated quickly and shelves restocked, digital D2S printing allows the containers to be updated with the regulated information, preventing product recalls and fines, and sent to the stores. 

Michelle Duerst, research vice president at Gartner, says her work indicates the market for D2S printing benefits from a convergence of events: the pandemic (supply outages), digital initiatives (customized products) and environmental efforts (reduced packaging). The result, according to Duerst, are opportunities ranging from prestige products, such as personalized cosmetics for the luxury market, to fast-moving, frequently changing consumer goods sold in big box stores.

Printing companies are generally good at looking beyond the hype about new technologies and applications. Use the Direct-to-Shape Printing Spectrum to understand the reality of digital D2S printing and the potential markets for your organization.

 WhatTheyThink Industry Snapshot, May 2020. http://whattheythink.com/industry-data/industry-snapshot/ 

 “2020 Analyst & Investor Day, February 25, 2020” presentation, page 75; https://www.deluxe.com/investor-relations/presentations/ 

Velox Brings Mass-Production to Digital Direct-to-Shape Printing

Israel’s Velox, founded in 2012, specializes in industrial-scale direct-to-shape digital printing—or, as the company calls it, “decorating”—predominantly on tubes, aerosols and other cylindrical items. Velox has developed both the ink and the system architecture, and the two “pillars” of its DTS-Inkjet technology are:

• Adaptive Deposition Architecture (ADA), its unique printing process, and 

• Variable Viscosity Ink (VVI), a specially formulated digital UV ink series that tackles the age-old problem of printing on sometimes print-unfriendly surfaces.

 The Velox IDS 250.

The target materials for the Velox printing system are plastic, laminate and aluminum tubes and aerosol cans, and it can print the full 360° without a gap or any kind of overlapping. The 14 colors and embellishments included in the system provide ultra-wide color gamut and accurate color matching. It can also print on the cap simultaneously. The company’s IDS Series is indeed geared for high production: the flagship IDS 250 can produce up to 250 containers per minute (naturally, your mileage will vary). However, it being a digital printing process, the Velox technology also supports short runs and on-demand production. 

 The Velox system can handle objects with diameters from 25 mm to 60 mm. Converters often work with three or four different size containers, and the mandrels that convey the containers through the press can be easily swapped out to handle different diameters. 

 The company is also developing the ability to print on other kinds of cylindrical objects, such as plastic, glass and aluminum bottles, beverage cans, glass and plastic jars.

 In addition to printing, the Velox system can also add embellishments, such as digital gloss/matte varnishes and embossing, all in the same pass. 

 

The types of brand owners that Velox is targeting at present include those that produce cosmetics, food and beverage, home and personal care, pharmaceuticals and oral care. 

Velox is positioning its system in part as a substitute for analog decoration technologies, as well as label printing.

“The trends today are toward much higher quality, more unique decoration on containers or packaging, and many more SKUs,” said Merav Sheffer, marketing manager for Velox. “There is a bigger demand for shorter time to market and on-demand and to not have to wait a few months to get orders fulfilled.”

Like a lot of digital production manufacturers, Velox finds itself at the intersection of where analog meets digital.

“[The Velox system] has all the benefits and the advantages of digital, but it’s also for mass production,” Sheffer said. “So it has the value, the volume and high-speed mass production. Basically, we say you can take out all your analog technologies and replace them with the Velox system because it has all those benefits.”

Image quality and ink economy are optimized using the aforementioned Variable Viscosity Ink.

“A special characteristic of our inks is that we can control the drop shape,” Sheffer said. “The drops are all the same size and when they touch the surface, they behave differently. This is why we can save on ink consumption.”

For example, in large areas of color, like solids, “we can let the drop spread out. And when we want very accurate detail, we will keep it from spreading," Sheffer said.

The company is also touting it as a more eco-friendly solution, throughout the entire production workflow. For example,  when it comes to replacing labels, the company estimates that it saves up to 27 tons of plastic, a calculation based on labels comprising 15% of tube decoration market and an extruded tube manufacturer with an annual capacity of 25–30 million, taking into account Velox’s higher ink consumption vs. analog.

Velox’s first installation was at Israel’s LAGEENTUBES, a tube manufacturer with a broad international base of customers. Velox is installing a second unit at a leading tube manufacturer in Europe, that prefers to remain anonymous. The company is also working on entering new markets, such as beverage cans and bottles, as well as other kinds of containers, such as semi-circular detergent bottles. —Richard Romano