OT: Thermal Inkjet Printer Experience

OT but I figured folks here might have some experience with this technology. We have a couple continuous inkjet units currently, an Imaje, and a Keyence. We have a small project that requires a basic message printed on plastic, that takes time away from our two continuous inkjet units running bigger projects, and my boss mentioned the ads in trade magazines she keeps seeing for "cheap" inkjets. I had never heard of the technology before, but it turned out to be a thermal inkjet coding machine. We ended up getting a Sneed TIJ printer for a fraction of what one of the continuous units go for. It seems too good to be true, but she pulled the trigger, so I guess we'll find out. I'll be the one dealing with it, so I thought I'd solicit any opinions. This project is less than a million units a year, with a basic lot and expiry date print with about quarter inch tall letters, at a line rate of 15-20 per minute.

They look nice, they have several videos on the website that may help make up your mind

We had maybe 20 imaje printers, they have improved a lot but in the early days they were a NIGHTMARE and a constant maintenance issue so a new technology I would invite and the prices are very good, how much is the ink?

Yeah, I've watched a bunch of their videos, and they seem to do the job well. The cartridges even for the high adhesion quick dry inks are less than $200. They claim character counts up to the tens of millions per cartridge, but that depends on the size of your characters and how high a resolution is required. I've done a bit of reading on the continuous vs thermal, admittedly a lot of it by thermal inkjet manufacturers, so a grain of salt is required. It seems that consumable costs are better for continuous at high volume and steady runs. If your process is lower volume with regular starts and stops, or intermittent runs, then thermal comes out ahead. From a maintenance standpoint, there's little to no PM on these thermals, and the print head is inside the cartridge, so fixing bad printing usually boils down to tossing the cartridge and replacing it. The product this is for is pretty intermittent with weeks between campaigns, so I'm thinking that a half empty cartridge going on the shelf at the end of a campaign won't be worth a hoot by the time the next campaign comes around, but for the cost of the cartridges, it almost doesn't matter. They advertise up to 600 dpi. We do one project on the Keyence where we print a tiny 6-7mm 2D barcode. That's one little experiment I'm going to try during commissioning to see if this thing can replicate that. Don't get me started on our Imaje. The Keyence is newer and seems to have a much improved self care regime, that has been pretty good for us so far for about 2 years.

My experience around Imaje printers is similar to you guys'. I've also been around VideoJet printers. the biggest issue I remember having with them was cleanliness and keeping the ink cool. We ended up having to put hotel-style mini fridges at the lines so they could swap out the warmed up bottles with cold ones.



My last place had some from Hitachi that I ended up using RS232 to interface with Siemens PLCs. I don't remember hearing nearly as many complaints from maintenance about the Hitachi printers as the VideoJets, which were way better than Imaje. But it may be that the production folks handled the Hitachis more directly and didn't involve maintenance as much. If we used them here, I would be very interested in the thermal version, especially if they easily support Ethernet/IP for changing the characters that get printed.

deanfran said:

The cartridges even for the high adhesion quick dry inks are less than $200. They claim character counts up to the tens of millions per cartridge, but that depends on the size of your characters and how high a resolution is required.

Click to expand...

Thats pretty good if that is the case

I had a cousin that sold Cannon copiers back in the 90's and he was well off... I was talking to him and he said they sold the copiers at cost, so I asked him how does he make his money, he said it was all in the ink/toner and paper, they even sold some large printers at a loss just so they could sell the ink

joseph_e2 said:

VideoJet printers

Click to expand...

Oh my god, I wish I forgot about them, I stared working on them in the 90's... if you never shut them off and used them (not standby) they worked great but when they did'nt bad day

I think it was a girl that invented the concept (with VideoJet) of charging the ink as it passed through the nozzle, she was very smart but I wish she had a different idea, I dont know how many umbilical's I had to replace because the return line was clogged from operators not knowing how to shut them down

A common problem, there were two bottles, ink & thinners, on a proper shutdown the ink was purged by the thinners so on startup they would work well, if just powered down it meant a long process of removing the cover of the head & dowsing it in the thinners while purging, sometimes this could take an hour & lots of thinners to unblock the print head.

parky said:

A common problem, there were two bottles, ink & thinners, on a proper shutdown the ink was purged by the thinners so on startup they would work well, if just powered down it meant a long process of removing the cover of the head & dowsing it in the thinners while purging, sometimes this could take an hour & lots of thinners to unblock the print head.

Click to expand...

And thats were the issue was... there was a fine line between cleaning and dowsing, if you "dowsed" the head for too long all that solvent went back into the ink reservoir and contaminated the ink, the ink did not work well if it was thinned to much, there should of been a waste reservoir when cleaning (shutting down) the waste needed a separate dump that would not contaminate the ink

Yes I have never seen one without a waste tank, after cleaning the head, we would purge with thinners, then replace both the ink & thinners after service always change the ink regardless it's age or level, there are other things they did not like, using other makes of ink (cheap compatible ones), the date is important & how it is set up it may require a certain type of ink for example an ink that is waterproof when dry (used if autoclave is used) the wrong ink or thinners used together will block the head.

Agree.

We had a couple guys go to school in them but the suits that were in charge said I was too busy to go and wanted me to keep fixing other issues and once the other guys got formal training I would not need to work on them anymore so it would free up my time.

6 months later they moved all of the broken ones and spares to a new room so they would need to look at me fixing them when they walk by.

Yep same happened to me, others went on the training & we had one guy who was very good as he had been trained before, he took me through all the possible problems & solutions, the biggy was definitely using the wrong solvent with the special ink for autoclaves, it would coagulate the ink causing massive problems. Although servicing them wasn't my job that was left to the shift engineers I too went through about 20 coders & sorted a good propotion of them. when the company was taken over however, I had to get involved more on the coders as all of those trained had left.

An Update: Ordered a printer, which arrived about a week later DOA.No power up at all. Called the company. They said they would send another as soon as the original arrived at their location in Texas. 2 weeks later "another" printer showed up on our dock. I immediately plugged it in, and guess what? DOA. The unit was haphazardly packaged, and frankly, I'm convinced they just sent the original DOA unit back to me. My advice? Stay away from Sneed Coding Systems.

Thanks for the bringing up this brand - we were about to bite the bullet and get one, but I think I'll hold off for now.

Out of your other brands, Markem etc, do you have a recommendation? I've primarily used Videojet but again these were models from 20 years ago.