Flatbed inkjet printers for architectural glass decoration and decor

The world of wide-format is a world of fast printing of often customized images, usually for short runs. A trade show booth may need glass walls, or glass table top. Or a restaurant may wish to have their logo on their windows (directly on the glass, not on roll-fed material adhered to the glass with an adhesive layer). UV-cured wide-format inkjet printers have traditionally been used for small print jobs such as these.

In the past, if you wanted long-runs of hundreds of examples or thousands of square meters, then you utilize screen printing, offset printing (for signage), pad printing, or flexo printing (for packaging, for example ). But today in-line production printing is also realistic with inkjet chemistry.

In-line printing on glass (compared with printing just one shower door)

If you need in-line printing on glass, this is a separate world of industrial printing. Durst would be an example for in-line printing on other materials (for printing on ceramic tiles, in-line or their printer for wooden décor). I have been to the Durst factory and demo rooms three times in Brixen and twice in Linz, Austria.

But then again what is in-line solution for glass printing? Glass does not always come in small orders. Glass printing is usually entering an architectural project existing much before the printing house is aware of its existence and the volumes are impressively high.

The weight of glass is considerably higher of the normal materials commonly printed in UV printing: 2.5kg/mm/m2. I remember visiting a printshop near Milan, Italy whose manager said how much trouble his circa 2006-vintage NUR Tempo had handling the weight of large glass plates.

WP Digital booth, Tampere 2009.

So taking into consideration all these aspects: in-line may require the automatic feeding system of glass in the printing machine that is going to increase the production speed tremendously due to the printing process that is continuous and simultaneous with the plates be manually loaded on the feeder in a continuous rhythm. In-line may be the glass pre-treatment machine connected through convey or belts to the printing machine. In-line may finally mean a fully automatic line, modular built that starts with a pick up table, washing machine, transportation belt, pre-treatment machine, transportation belt and printing system. This is how WP Digital company is creating a solution for printing on glass with UV inks. A line built per necessity, from manual units to semiautomatic and fully automatic units in pre-treatment without compromising the printing quality and the printed product properties. Through partners in industry, WP Digital is offering the knowledge upon the in-line solution and even assisting in providing customized solutions for every need.

A brief presentation of the glass decoration process is to be found in Specialist Printing site:

www.specialistprinting.com

under the Process Information Centre: Printing on flat glass.

Here some samples. What at first appears to be printed on mesh material and then applied to a piece of glass, is in reality printed by a WP Digital RS25 or RS35 DIRECTLY onto the glass surface itself.

Misleading information in UV printer spec sheets

For printing on glass, I would estimate that 90% of the UV printer manufactur ers claim their machines can print on glass. Just look at their spec sheets and advertising claims.

FLAAR does not accept these claims on all their spec sheets. In most cases these claims are misleading at best and inappropriate. The only companies where I have seen experience with printing on glass would be

• At the high end I have seen definite dedication to glass during 2009 from WP Digital (Virtu RS25 and Virtu RS35). They also featured printing on glass in several graphical trade shows (often it has to be Plexiglas since some trade shows do not allow real glass to be in a booth due to liability if the glass breaks and someone is injured). WP Digital presented a paper on glass decoration in Viscom Dusselfdorf workshop on the 2nd of October. They have been to Glass Processors days in Tampere featuring prints on glass in their own booth. They are going this month in Vitrum presenting natural stones and water surfaces often comforting us in our homes. And finally they are presently the year 's results and future prospects in GlassPrint 2009 in Darmstad Germany in November.
• At mid range: IP&I (I have visited printshops using IP&I Cube printers on glass). Since GCC has considerable experience printing on ceramic tiles (one of the best in the industry at mid-range printer price), I would estimate they can also handle printing on glass).
• At entry level SkyAir Ship: they are market leaders for UV-cured flatbeds within China, mostly for the glass printing market. I have visited their factory and inspected their special model to handle glass sheets, the Skyjet GlassMaster.

I would like to point out that the Skyjet (SkyAir Ship) have been selling printers for glass somewhat longer than other companies who may emblazen their ads by saying they were first; I would bet that SkyAir Ship had one long before).

Glass printing with most inkjet printers requires pre or post-treatment

I am only convinced that a manufacturer can legitimately sell into the glass market when either I see a chemist in their company headquarters, or when I see a relationship with a major university chemical department or other comparable technology department (WP Digital with the University of Bern); Durst with several universities in Austria). For IP&I my documentation was visiting a printshop that printed on glass year in year out. SkyAir Ship has the experience gained from more than one hundred glass-printing shops that use their earlier models.

Merely putting glass samples in your booth is not enough. Merely listing glass in your spec sheet is worse.

And I am not impressed by any company that says they don't need a primer. In order to believe that I would need to see significant glass decoration companies daring to sell such a product to a skeptical end-user. If you are using UV-curing inks, glass requires a pre-treatment and in many cases needs post-treatment as well.

If your UV ink needs no primer, then you probably need post-treatment, namely firing in a special oven at high temperatures for about 20 minutes. It is not appropriate to sell a printer without the entire workflow machinery. Again, we congratulate WP Digital and GCC for their experience with the complete workflow for printing on slippery surfaces. And I am impressed by the progress made by SkyAir Ship in handling the physical sheets of glass on their printer (glass is heavy, and obviously fragile).

I can add additional UV printing companies to the list of reliable resources with realistic factual knowledge of glass decoration when I see their ability in their factory and/or in their headquarters demo room.

Or, you can laminate the glass

Another way to protect the glass is to sandwich it between another layer. This way no one can use alcohol, Windex or other cleaning fluids, and no one can scratch it. Just hope that no condensation gets inside from change of temperature over the seasons.

But if you laminate your glass then indeed you may not need to heat-treat it after printing or in some cases even prime it before printing.

But… what about stacking the glass after it is printed, and between the time it is printed and when it finally gets laminated! How many of the images will be scratched or otherwise marred?

Be aware that most special ink for printing on glass is dull and unattractive

At APPPEXPO in Shanghai about three or four of the booths were using a UV-curing ink for glass from Toyo (even when they were not actually printing on glass). Unfortunately the color and saturation of this ink is not very attractive (a polite way of saying it is dull and boring).

I have seen other glass ink from other brands that is even worse (so dull I don't know why they bother to show such weak samples at a public venue).

So if someone promises you an ink that will adhere to glass, be sure that the colors will pop. Otherwise, a dull image on glass is less inspiring than a dull image on PVC.

In the meantime, on this FLAAR web page, I will list some glass decoration resources.

Glass conferences

GlassBuild America is a major show, autumn, includes glass printing UV-cured flatbeds. This event includes glass, windows, and doors (shower doors and all other kinds of doors). Organized by the National Glass Association. Their year 2010 event will be in the Las Vegas Convention Center, Sept. 14-16 (Tuesday through Thursday). It alternatives between Atlanta and Las Vegas.

Glassman Europe, Czech Glass Society. There are also Glassman exhibitions and conferences in other parts of the world.

Glassprint 2009, Darmstadt, Germany, 25-26 November 2009.

Glasstec

Vitrum

Trade magazines with informabout about printing on glass

Annual ESMA Glass Publication, Europe

Architect's Guide to Glass and Metal

Door & Window Manufacturer Magazine

GFF, Journal for Glass, Windows, Façade, Germany

Glass Magazine, National Glass Association, USA

Specialist Printing (ESMA), Europe

Glass Worldwide (ESMA), Europe

US Glass

Window Film, USA

Window&Door, USA

Glass Associations (in US; many more in Europe, such as ESMA).

American Architectural Manufacturers Association (AAMA)

Bath Enclosure Manufacturers Association

Glass Association of North America (GANA)

Insulating Glass Manufacturers Alliance

National Glass Association

New glass printing technique(s): from Ormo Print

The major glass manufacturers need ceramic inks for longevity. UV-cured ink is inadequate for décor and outdoor architectural decoration (this is what every giclee atelier and décor printing company complains about UV-cured chemistry today: nowhere near enough longevity).

Ceramic inks can be jetted through Spectra printheads, but almost no normal printer manufacturer offers this kind of ink system in a regular flatbed printer: because the inks then have to be heated in an oven. Printers such as the GlassJet from DIP Tech, I have not even seen this printer at FESPA, and actually don't know whether it was even at DRUPA 2008 (if so their PR agency did not reach the rest of the world; I spent 12 days at DRUPA and never saw any significant glass printing systems). Actually I have seen more glass printed at WP Digital demo room in Wittenbach, Switzerland, than anywhere else.

Printshops in strip malls don't have the space (or investment capital) for this kind of system. Printshops in the real world, the mass-market printshops, look for a more realistic way to print on glass for normal projects and normal applications: such as a new museum exhibit, or a store front, or a new office.

Thus I was interested in learning about Ormo Print, Ormo Print GmbH, from Bryan Collings (Publishing Director, Specialist Printing, at his booth at VISCOM Duesseldorf). He told me about Prof. Dr.-Ing. Ferdinand Trier, at the Munich University of Applied Sciences. Prof Dr.Ing. Trier is at their Laboratory for Measurement Techniques Consultation for Glassing and Glasscoating, Lothstrasse 34, D-80335 München. His e-mail: trier@fhm.edu

Separately a printer manufacturer who is using Ormo Print ink told me about this new potential, but I am under NDA as to the manufacturer of the printer. But Ormo Print was openly discussed at the booth that had all the nice ESMA glass publications.

The ink from Ormo Print is briefly descriped in Specialist Printing magazine, 2009. This Sol-Gel is a solvent-based ink, not a UV-cured ink. As soon as I have an opportunity to test this ink I can update my observations. In the meantime, the most realistic printers to handle glass remain UV-cured flatbeds. There are plenty of uses for UV-cured ink which will last several years inside and at least a few years outside: not enough for building decoration on a façade facing outside, but adequate for temporary decoration.

Why I am interested in decorating glass?

My interest in glass comes from my background in architecture. Half of my family for three generations have been architects: just Google Hellmuth architect and you will see why I studied architecture my first three years at the university. 100% of the entries for all initial complete page after page of Google results are all family. But for my junior year I took a year off to do architectural history research on 8 th century Mayan temple pyramid and royal palace architecture of Peten, Guatemala, and I stayed in archaeology for many decades, moving from Harvard through three research positions at Yale. Being an archaeologist meant I spent many years looking at glass: museum exhibit cases!

But most museums are too static, a polite way of saying a tad 18 th century. Surely there are ways to make a museum come to life (and I don't mean only at night in the silly way as in the movies that entertain you as you fly on an airplane and need to watch mindless movies to relieve boredom).

So printing on glass is because I enjoy all aspects of architectural decoration, I seek better methods to decorate museum glass (exhibit cases), and I am inherently interested in innovative technology per se.

Decorating Ceramic tiles: similar issues to printing on glass

As an archaeologist I have an even more natural interest in painting on fired ceramics. Indeed one of my specialities in Mayan archaeology is the iconography of symbolism on painted funerary ceramics, 4 th -9 th centuries AD, Guatemala, Mexico, Belize, and Honduras. I specialize also in the digital photographing recording of these Classic Maya vase paintings (see www.maya-archaeology.org)

For printing on unfired ceramics, Durst provides special printers for this industry. But most needs for decorated ceramics are not from factories, but from artists and architects and graphic designers: they need to print designs on ceramic tiles that are already fired. Here the best company is GCC: they have two separate chemical companies who have created the necessary primers.

I hope that in future updates on this page I can add additional printer manufacturers to the list of recommended resources. For GCC I know about their capability since I have visited the chemical companies in Taiwan and China (near Shanghai). There are already FLAAR Reports about these visits.

Any company that claims they can print, with UV-cured ink, on fired clay tiles, with no chemical treatment are even less convincing than a company claiming the same unlikely workflow for glass.

Anyone can print on glass and on tiles: the question is whether it will fall off after a few months, especially if subjected to heat. The tiles we printed at Gandinnovations factory were put on top of our microwave oven and the entire layer of ink puckered up and came off completely (as in 100% of the ink layer came off).

Acknowledgements

I thank Diana Dogaru of WP Digital for providing helpful, current, and useful information on glass conferences and glass symposiums. She has considerable real-world experience in UV-curable printing on glass (as well as color management and other aspects of grand format printing, both traditional solvent and the latest UV-cured).

I thank the management of Sky Air Ship for arranging that the FLAAR Technical Writer on UV-curing printers (Jose Melgar) and myself could spend several days visiting their factory and demo room in China. Sky Air Ship is the #1 seller of UV-curable flatbed printers inside China. Most of their printers are used for decorating glass. Their glass industry partner in America, IGE Solutions, recently exhibited their flatbed printer at the major glass decoration trade show in Atlanta. Mark Ma from Sky AirShip was there.

Several samples printed by the Skyjet GlassMaster SkyAir Ship company, shown in booth of IGE Solutions at a recent glass decoration trade show, Atlanta, 2009.

 

 

First posted October 21, 2009.