First machine sold to Apsara Silk
Durst, the specialist in industrial inkjet applications, presented its Kappa 180 high-performance digital inkjet printer at the India ITME show in Mumbai. The high-performance inkjet printer – from the printheads to the inks – was developed by Durst’s own designers and engineers and was hailed as a genuine alternative to flatbed screen printing systems when first demonstrated at the ITMA 2011 trade show.
With a printing speed of more than 600 m2/hour (over 300 running metres), coupled with outstanding printing quality (1056 x 600 dpi), the printer allows on-demand production of between one and many thousands of running metres.
Durst has appointed Kothari Info-tech Ltd. as its agent for selling the machines in India. The company has sold the first Kappa 180 to Apsara Silks of Bangalore.
Durst is regarded as a pioneer in the field of photographic technology and has launched a host of innovations on the market in the course of its 80-year history. Over the past ten years the company has played a decisive role in the adaptation of digital printing technologies in the wood, glass, ceramics and large-format printing sectors. In 2010 it brought out the Rhotex 320, a dye sublimation textile printer which immediately set new standards of quality in the industrial soft signage segment. With Kappa 180, Durst is now introducing a high-performance inkjet printer for the textile industry that will be a real alternative to flatbed screen printing.
Optimal image quality, coupled with genuine value added, has top priority for Durst customers. To improve and maintain quality standards continually, the company develops the key components itself, including the printheads and inks. With Kappa 180, it offers uncompromising high-end technology from a single source as well as an unbeatable price:performance ratio.
The Kappa 180 inkjet technology opens the door to completely new creations, since there are no limits as far as design or colors are concerned. Unlike conventional printing methods, there are no pre-printing processes – printing orders and changeovers are processed directly via the workflow software, set-up times and screen-making are things of the past, and the system is ready for printing within a few hours.
Water consumption during the production process is reduced by up to 90 per cent, and only a fraction of the chemicals normally used is required. In addition to these environmentally friendly and cost-effective benefits, printing orders remain reproducible at all times.
Printheads
Durst’s proprietary Quadroprinthead technology was developed further for the Kappa 180, so that the specific requirements of the textile sector could be fulfilled with “QuadroZ”. The modified Durst QuadroZ Array system makes it possible to print on textiles with water-based inks by way of a specially hardened, fray-resistant nozzle plate with a drop size of 7-21 picoliters. As many as 6,144 jets per color produce a resolution of up to 1,680 dpi, while a single automatic nozzle cleaning system ensures uninterrupted operation.
The QuadroZ Arrays print eight colors in CMYK, orange, red, blue and gray with no modulations or density fluctuations.
A key role is played here by the ink delivery system with the osmosis filtering system that eliminates the tiny gas bubbles in the inks and ensures that printing is steady and failure-free.
Inks
For textile printing applications, Durst has developed its own high-performance inks (Kappa Inks) for the piezo inkjet multipass technology. These are used for printing with absolutely environmentally friendly, water-based dispersion, reactive and acid inks on the different textile fibers by way of the QuadroZ Arrays. The characteristics of Kappa Inks are deep black, outstanding luminosity and excellent stability:
• Kappa Ink R (Reactive Ink System) for cotton and cotton mixtures with more than 60 per cent cotton
• Kappa Ink D (Dispersion Ink System) for synthetic fibers, polyester and polyester mixtures with more than 50 per cent polyester
• Kappa Ink A (Acid Ink System) for silk and silk mixtures
Besides the printing machine itself, the RIP is the most important and also the most error-prone component in the printing process. For this reason, Durst, together with specialist Caldera, has developed GrandRIP+ software for digital textile printing, tailoring it to match the Kappa 180.
The speedy, reliable and high-performing workflow solution encompasses all the functions required for creation and management of printing orders. These include such features as tiling, embedded color profiles and ICC-compliant output, Photoshop plug-ins, coloring and color co-ordination of textile print data, a dashboard with a preview function and rapid access to printing orders, multitasking control for distributed printing machines and enhanced ink management.
The digital printing data can be collated and configured individually by means of the layout & compose function. To this end, GrandRIP+ supports the standard image formats EPS, PS, PDF, JPG, Photoshop and TIF.
With Durst Advanced Remote Diagnostics (DARD), the Kappa 180 has an innovative remote maintenance and alert system which monitors all relevant parameters, including printheads, humidity, temperature, voltage, etc., in order to maintain an even production process and prevent unscheduled machine downtimes.
Being a top-quality textile printing machine, the Durst Kappa 180 has fully automatic feeding-in and guiding facilities for textiles with a maximum printing width of 195 cm and a printing blanket with an integrated washing system. The drying unit is a hot air dryer powered by gas, steam or electricity.