The printing industry has been able to stand still today for its own reasons. Almost every technological innovation or revolution can bring the printing industry to a new level and arouse people's endless reverie. In recent years, digital technology has become a hot topic in the printing industry, and computer companies like Hewlett-Packard are also participating in the printing market with their vibrant inkjet web printers. Nowadays, global printing and publishing companies have gradually formed three camps: early adopters of digital technology, supporters of offset printing technology, and creators of organic combination of digital and offset printing technology. So, as time goes by, what new markets or hot technologies are there that are worth paying attention to in the printing industry today? Let us take inventory one by one.

Variable and controllable white ink technology

Printing white text or patterns on a dark background has never been a simple matter. Fortunately, "white ink" technology is available. This is a product specially developed by Hewlett-Packard for its Indigo digital printing machine. Its opacity is mainly determined by the number of ink drops ejected. The more white ink droplets the printer uses, the more opaque the text or pattern it prints. Although its price is more expensive, it can bring better visual effects to users.

In the digital printing process, the device can control the printing effect by adjusting the number of drops of ink ejected during a paper feed. In the offset printing process, in order to obtain the same printing effect, the user has to print the same substrate at least 5 times. Although the emergence of "white ink" technology provides a cheaper solution for white hot stamping, silk printing or thermal transfer printing of plastics, it is still slightly inferior to manual processing in terms of texture and feel. In short, the best feature of this technology is that it can print different visual effects by controlling the number of ink drops ejected by the printer, especially on various color substrates.

For designers, "white ink" technology brings unlimited possibilities. It can make printing labels and packaging on transparent materials a reality. For the production supervisor, it is now possible to abandon the previous practice of printing on white paper with dark ink first, and then leaving the text or image area blank. Nevertheless, printing text or image elements with white ink still faces many challenges, such as the problem of registration. No satisfactory solution has been found for both digital printing presses and offset printing presses.

Nanoprinting technology to fill the gap

The nano-printing technology invented by Benny Landa, the father of digital printing, has been expected to fill the gap in the market between offset printing and digital printing since its birth. It works like this: First, inject Randa Nano Ink into the print head, which is a water-based ink containing nano-scale pigment particles. During printing, the ink is first transferred to a heated blanket and then transferred to the substrate. The substrates compatible with it are mainly standard coated paper or non-coated paper without special treatment, plastic packaging film or label Paper etc.

The biggest advantage of nano-printing technology lies in its ultra-small ink particles. After reaching the nanometer size, the properties of many materials will change. The performance of nano ink in this respect is very good. Due to its hard texture, this ink has strong abrasion and scratch resistance. Nano ink can absorb more light, so it can provide a wider CMYK color gamut. In addition, the tiny pigment particles can also make the ink film more uniform and the image clearer.

Once the nano ink is transferred to the heated blanket, the water it contains will evaporate, leaving an ultra-thin ink film. So people don't have to wait for the ink film to dry-which is common in offset and digital printing processes-and can go directly to the next production step.

In addition, nano-printing also allows users to print more colors in the printing area without the problem of over-saturation. Nano ink can print up to 8 colors, with a resolution between 600dpi and 1200dpi, and the speeds can reach 13000 pages/hour and 200 meters/minute on sheet-fed and web presses respectively.