Knowledge Base
Inkjet Insight provides valuable tools and resources to help companies objectively evaluate the potential of inkjet for their business, optimize their operations and grow their businesses using production inkjet.
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Developing a Testing Process for Inkjet Adoption
August 16, 2018In the past, when new graphic arts technology has been introduced, the first response has often been, “It will never be good enough to replace ‘X.’” It was said that offset printing would never be good enough to replace letterpress. Web offset would never be good enough to replace sheetfed. Toner-based digital print would never be good enough to replace offset. The introduction of production inkjet was no different. Read More
You Can Do More with Sheet-Fed
August 14, 2018Sheet-fed presses have traditionally addressed high image quality requirements, short runs, substrate flexibility, larger format applications such as folder or posters, expanded color gamut, and value-added enhancements. This article discusses the market opportunity for sheet-fed inkjet presses, a range of devices, and opportunities. Read More
Print Providers and Buyers Managing Paper Together
August 1, 2018Andy Gordon discusses ways that print providers and their print buying customers can work together to reduce the disruptive impact of paper scarcity. More planning, more testing and more emphasis on strategy can lead to shared success. Read More
Managing Color in Crayon Space
July 31, 2018John Seymour joins Inkjet Insight for part one of a series discussing color management using crayons as a guide. Part one poses the challenging of creating a linear organization of a non-linear concept. Read More
Your OEM Wants You to Find The Right Paper
July 26, 2018Print OEMs need to understand that, for the foreseeable future, they will be judged as much on their paper program as the print technology they offer to the market. Read More
Inkjet in Label Printing – Part 1
July 24, 2018Chris Lynn explores the reasons why toner and inkjet account for under 10% of the volume of labels printed last year and why the label sector of the packaging market was the first to adopt digital technologies despite the uphill battle. Read More
White Paper: Océ VarioPrint i300 Offers Flexibility and Growth
July 18, 2018Production inkjet has been limited in its ability to produce customized jobs on a wide range of substrates due to a predominantly roll-fed approach. Canon’s research and development of sheet-fed inkjet presses has addressed customization and substrate flexibility while bringing the benefits of inkjet printing to an expanded application range. Read More
Paper Suppliers and Crisis Communications
July 17, 2018My last post, Paper Supply and Strategic Planning, continued our coverage of paper shortage in the U.S. market. This post offers suggestions to mills and paper merchants on how they can help print providers navigate this difficult time. Read More
IWCO Direct’s Journey to Inkjet
July 13, 2018Robert Clark of IWCO Direct discusses their experience migrating from conventional print to production inkjet. The pros far outweighed the cons, but that doesn't mean the journey to inkjet came without a learning curve. Read More
Paper Supply and Strategic Planning
July 10, 2018Inkjet Insight is closely watching the challenging paper shortage in the U.S. market. Our team has covered different aspects of this topic from pulp trends to impacts to the supply chain. Most recently, we have been interviewing subject matter experts throughout the paper supply chain to gain a holistic view of the market. It’s clear that the tight paper market is driving frustration and change and it’s incumbent on participants throughout the supply chain to consider how to solve this challenge. Read More
Zanders Optimistic During Restructuring
July 2, 2018Last week Zanders GmbH issued a press release regarding the continued restructuring process for the company. The release included a sentiment that we don’t often hear in these types of announcements: optimism. Read More
Ricoh Pro VC 70000 Overview
June 26, 2018I had the opportunity to see the Ricoh Pro VC70000 in action at Ricoh’s Boulder Colorado Customer Experience Center last week and to learn about some of the innovations that differentiate it from the rest of the Pro VC lineup. While visually similar to the VC 60000, the VC7000 offers three key innovations: new ink chemistry, advanced drying technology and finely controlled drop sizes. Read More
Haberbeck: Offset and, not or Production Inkjet
June 20, 2018Christian Heneke of Service & Print Group Haberbeck gave a presentation today at the Ricoh Interact 2018 event on offset and inkjet working together. Like many companies, Haberbeck looked at the volumes of current work that could be transferred to inkjet, but he had a broader message. Read More
Potential for Inkjet in Packaging
June 7, 2018The package printing climate is changing, and waves of new technology are breaking on the shores of short-run work, but the packaging mainland is mostly unaffected so far. Chris Lynn offers insights on the packaging market for inkjet. Read More
Color Vision Deficiencies
June 4, 2018Knowing he color capabilities of your inkjet device is very important, but understanding the color capabilities of your press crew is critical. Visually tweaking or modifying color on press is never an efficient or repeatable way to run production. Making your staff aware of their potential vision deficiencies will help catch color, as well as print quality issues, before they get to your customer. Here are some things you should know. Read More
Mitigating Risk in the Paper Supply Chain
May 30, 2018There are a number of issues with the inkjet paper supply chain that are going to test your paper qualification and sourcing policies. You will need to test more papers, track them carefully and ensure that your receiving dock runs like a NASCAR pit stop. Here are a few survival tips. Read More
“What’s your Why – Your Road to Production Inkjet” Event Explored Production Inkjet Opportunities
May 24, 2018This week Elizabeth Gooding was the keynote speaker and panel moderator at a thought leadership workshop hosted by Xerox at its Gil Hatch Center for Customer Innovation. Xerox assembled a group of print operation executives from transactional, book, inplant, and commercial printing to explore production inkjet opportunities. Read More
Pulp Fiction – Challenges Within the Paper Supply Chain
May 22, 2018The demand for paper and pulp is growing and the supply chain is having a hard time keeping up. We lost a couple of other mills over the past year, West Lynn and Appleton, contributing to a 16% overall loss in inventory. Read More
Pigment Ink and Creme Brûlée
May 15, 2018As inkjet moves into applications with high ink coverage and quality demands, users can run into some hard to diagnose problems. If you only focus on the paper and the print heads when trying to diagnose print quality issues, you could struggle for a long time looking in the wrong places. Read More
EFI Inkjet Innovation in New Hampshire
May 10, 2018This week I had the opportunity to attend the ribbon cutting ceremony at the new 225,000 square foot EFI innovation center in Londonderry New Hampshire. In his opening remarks Guy Gecht, CEO of EFI said "the future of packaging is inkjet printing" and based on EFI's massive investment in this very impressive facility, they are ready to meet demand. Read More
The #1 Question When Selling Inkjet
May 8, 2018Investing in a production inkjet solution is both a major expenditure and the beginning of major changes for the organization. Most companies invest because they believe that new hardware and software will help them to make money – either by doing more for the customers they have or by attracting new customers. Read More
What is Value Anyway? An Objective Approach to Understanding Inkjet Value
May 1, 2018People are always trying to figure out how to get more value for less money. Designing an inkjet solution is no exception.
But, here’s the thing, you need to be able to define what “value” is, and with inkjet it’s often about more than one thing. In this post, as always, we try to make it objective. Read More
Essential Software for Inkjet Success
April 30, 2018Elizabeth Gooding shares her insights on key software investments to deliver end-to-end workflows that meet customer needs, are scalable, and achieve production efficiency goals. Read More
Key Trends in Inkjet Paper Development & Evaluation
April 19, 2018Advances in inkjet technology and fluids are enabling production on a wider variety of paper grades and finishes. How does this impact the evaluation process for papers? What new variables must be considered when evaluating paper for particular application segments. Mary offered work-arounds for scarcity in the market and tips on finding and evaluating papers. Read More
Understanding Paper Specifications-Shade
April 16, 2018Shade is important to inkjet color reproduction as the paper's shade shows through the ink and can shift the ink's colorant when applied to the sheet. Paper shade can affect all values of highlight, mid-tone and shadow areas of print. Read More
Inkjet Fun Crossword Puzzle Answer Key
April 13, 2018There were so many great inkjet conferences this week and we felt bad for the people who couldn't attend so we made a crossword puzzle to keep you busy. As promised - here is the answer key. Read More
Business Case Calculator for Software
April 11, 2018A very simple tool to allow you do do some "what if" analysis on how improvements in uptime, minimizing paper changes and other seemingly minimal improvements can impact your revenue over the course of the year. It adds up! Read More
Understanding Paper Specifications-Whiteness
April 10, 2018Paper whiteness is particularly important in markets for which small text and readability is important such as book as well as magazine. For magazine images, the level of OBA's in the paper can affect color reproduction accuracy of certain colors combinations. Read More
Inkjet Fun – Crossword
April 9, 2018We've put together something to keep you thinking about inkjet - an inkjet crossword puzzle. If you've been reading our posts you should find this pretty easy. Post a comment to brag if you finish in less than 10 minutes. Read More
Understanding Paper Specifications-Brightness
April 6, 2018Characteristics like brightness, whiteness and shade level of the paper can impact the inkjet color outcomes for your project. Lets talk about how some of the manufactured paper specifications and how brightness can directly affect your color fidelity. Read More
Inkjet for Catalogs and Magazines – What Matters?
April 4, 2018Offset printing satisfies the majority of the production requirements for both catalogs and magazines. As marketers seek to increase ROI, you can start to make the case for shorter runs, versioning, hyper-localization, and personalization and then inkjet printing starts to become interesting. Read More
How to Make the Business Case for Essential Software
March 26, 2018As faster and more productive inkjet devices reach the market, maximizing productive uptime is truly essential. Unfortunately, many companies skimp on building the costs for essential software into their inkjet justification. Find out how costly this mistake can be. Read More
Inkjet Print Head Pop Quiz
March 21, 2018OEM executives and analysts offer balanced overviews of the pros and cons of the different print head technologies, but to understand which is best buyers need to look beyond the head technology itself and consider specific characteristics of each implementation of the technology. Here are the questions to ask. Read More
Screening Software Drives Inkjet Quality
March 20, 2018David Zwang joins us for an initial look at an interesting new screening software development that significantly improves the quality of inkjet imaging. The software referenced is only available as an option from an OEM as part of their RIP, or as a component in a custom-developed (bespoke) hybrid inkjet printing solution. Read More
Inkjet for Marketing Collateral – What Matters?
March 15, 2018While the conversion of marketing collateral from offset to digital may not be high, the value for digitally printed collateral is often much higher than other applications, typically driven by shorter run lengths, versioning and personalization. This has created excellent revenue opportunities for commercial printers who specialize in this area. Read More
Objective Ink Measures – Chroma
March 14, 2018In this installment of "Let Data Drive your Print Quality Comparisons" Mary Schilling discusses the importance of chroma, how it's defined within the context of print quality analysis and differences between inkjet and offset. Read More
HP Thermal Print Head Strategy – Video
March 12, 2018Eric Wiesner of HP provides the 4th installment in our print head strategy series. Wiesner provides some history on HPs print head developments and highlights the factors that drove HP to select thermal print heads for their production devices in the graphics market. Read More
Inkjet Growth Should be Faster
March 8, 2018Despite what can be seen as very healthy growth rates, the production inkjet market could be growing considerably faster. Let's look at the barriers to inkjet growth and how we as an industry can work together to tear them down. Read More
Objective Inkjet Measures – Optical Density
March 5, 2018This the first in a series of articles by Mary Schilling that will drill down on specific print quality metrics, what they mean, how they are measured and what factors in your printing process can affect them. Optical Density is one of the important quality metrics that can be objectively measured and it can be correlated to a number of other quality metrics. Read More
Ricoh Piezo Print Head Strategy – Video
February 28, 2018Another perspective on Piezo. Video ion Ricoh's selection of piezoelectric print heads for their production inkjet devices. Mike Herold, Director of Global Marketing for Ricoh Inkjet Solutions, provides his quick take on the science behind piezo and how it delivers benefits in the form of reliability and efficiency. Read More
Let Data Drive your Print Quality Comparisons
February 26, 2018Mary Schilling discusses objective inkjet print quality comparisons and the benefits of a data-driven approach. Objective print quality analysis provides clear comparative data and removes all personal bias and visual subjective deficiencies when reviewing prints off competing inkjet devices. Inkjet beauty is more than skin deep! Read More
Not-So-Simple Discussion of Inkjet Economics – Part 3
February 23, 2018Part Three in the Inkjet Economics series by Elizabeth Gooding. This time discussing how simple assumptions about timing can have a big impact on evaluation and profitability. Read More
Essential Consulting Services – Part 2
February 23, 2018Part two in the series "Essential Services" by Andrew Gordon will discuss activities to drive customer acceptance and revenue including testing, certifications, and business development. There are a lot of services that go into getting an inkjet implementation up and running smoothly. Planning for them in advance helps to avoid surprises and take advantage of OEM buying incentives. Read More
Essential Consulting Services – Part 1
February 13, 2018Andrew Gordon discusses the range of services to consider before, during and after a production inkjet implementation that will help to ensure your success with inkjet in the shortest time. (Part 1 of 2 in series) Read More
Commercial Printers Under Pressure
February 12, 2018Marco Boer discusses the surprising array of labor and technology trends that are putting pressure on commercial printing enterprises to invest in production inkjet technology. Includes charts, graphs, trends and the insight decoder ring from Marco. Read More
Highly Calendered Inkjet Papers – What to Know
February 7, 2018Mary Schilling dives into the process for creating inkjet treated, coated and hybrid papers that are treated, yet perform like a coated paper. Some mills describe these as a "coated feel" paper and list them as coated, while others list them as treated (which is technically more accurate.) Read More
Apparent Resolution – what does that even mean?
February 5, 2018Contributing author Chris Lynn provides and insightful explanation of "Apparent Resolution": what it means, how it came to be and whether or not it matters for your application segment when evaluating an inkjet press. Read More
Inkjet for Color Books – HP Perspective (Video)
January 30, 2018Video interview with Eric Weisner, General Manager of HP PageWide Industrial. Eric provides an overview of HP in the book market, specifically color books. He describes the market as a "key focus area" for HP and says that HDNA heads were fundamentally designed to be able to produce color books. Read More
Profiling with Primers and Coatings
January 29, 2018In the previous post How to Make an Inkjet Sandwich I talked about the potential different ways that ink can react to a substrate when used in combination with other fluids such as primers or post-coatings. Those interactions make it critical to optimize all the fluids for your entire process, prior to linearization and profiling, to avoid print defects such as color to color bleed and coalescence. Read More
Hide Your Data. The Hackers are Coming.
January 23, 2018Three weeks into 2018 and it’s already been a bad year on the information security front. On January 3rd Google’s Project Zero team reported a security flaw affecting any devices that use chips from Intel, AMD or ARM – which pretty much covers most personal computers, tablets and servers. There are two main vulnerabilities, “Meltdown” and “Spectre” that sound like they were named after Bond villains. Read More
How to Make an Inkjet Sandwich
January 22, 2018We got a lot of good feedback on Elizabeth's post on Peanut Butter and Workflow so I thought I would keep the sandwich metaphor going. When using pre-coatings and post-coatings with inkjet, you are creating an inkjet sandwich served on a paper plate. Each layer of the sandwich can make the ink spread and dry unevenly if not managed before profiling, creating a soggy sandwich.
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Peanut Butter and Workflow
January 18, 2018A workflow is a workflow whether or not it is automated. Your process for making a peanut butter sandwich can be a workflow. There are lots of different kinds of software that can be used to automate different processes, and those processes can be considered workflows, but that doesn’t make the software “a workflow solution.” Many excellent software vendors throw a wide array of their software solutions into a big bucket called “print workflow automation” and that makes it a very messy fishing expedition for buyers to find a solution for the particular aspect of a print process that they are trying to automate. Read More
Building End-to-End Data Security into Inkjet – White Paper
January 17, 2018The issue of data security is so pervasive that it has moved from an IT and boardroom discussion to become the topic of movies and television shows. More than 7 billion records were exposed through breaches in just the first nine months of 2017, a jump of over 300 percent from the prior year. Five of the top breaches in 2017 were among the largest ten breaches of all time. With over five million records lost or stolen every day, protecting businesses and consumers from data breaches is a top concern among executives in all industries. While there is a tendency to think of data breaches in terms of the web and digital initiatives, security is no less critical for printing operations. Read More
Inks are the Blood – Video
January 9, 2018Marco Boer of I.T. Strategies joins us again for a deep dive into inkjet ink sets (try saying that five times fast). He gives a clear, concise overview of aqueousRead More
The Truth About the Digital Color Evolution
January 8, 2018It’s been said of the great artist J.M.W. Turner — renowned for pounding out his own colors to create seemingly incandescent oil paintings — that he “painted with tinted steam.”Read More
Welcome to 2018 – Time Flies as Inkjet Accelerates
January 2, 2018Suddenly, it’s a new year. It’s been coming on steadily for 365 days and then “time” happened over night. Those are the tricks that time plays. Many people who hadRead More
Transactional Images Looking a Bit Ragged?
December 12, 2017Traditional transaction documents are turning into “transitional” documents with more personalization, graphics and color. Unfortunately, some of those transactional images are looking a bit ragged. I’ve started counting the numberRead More
Skew the Gamut
December 8, 2017Mary Schilling recently wrote about different approaches to matching Pantone colors on production inkjet. We got an interesting note from one of our UK readers, David Albin, who suggested that forcingRead More
Can You Print This Pantone Color with Production Inkjet?
December 6, 2017“Can You Print This Pantone Color with Inkjet?” This is a question we hear over and over. Not just from customers, but from customer representatives, designers and sales people. AndRead More
West Linn Inkjet Papers – Going Not Gone
November 30, 2017A Good Inkjet Paper Is Hard to Find. Get It While It Lasts. West Linn paper mill will be shutting its doors at the end of 2017. The industry losesRead More
How Media Affects Perceived Resolution
November 16, 2017Print manufacturers include print resolution in their machine specs. It is usually shown as dots per inch (DPI) e.g. 600 x 600 or 1200 x 1200, but you may also see different amounts for the process and cross process directions e.g. 600 x 480, particularly with high speed continuous devices. Read More
Inkjet Economics – Operating Costs – Part 2 of 3
November 13, 2017When looking at a big ticket item like a production inkjet device, the one with the lowest price may seem like the best choice. The cost of the machine is the big number (the race car) that will play the smallest role in total cost of ownership. It’s the operating costs that can make or break your return on investment. Read More
Not-So-Simple Discussion of Inkjet Economics – Part 1 of 3
November 9, 2017Total Cost of Ownership starts with Capital Costs Part 1 of a 3 part series on inkjet economics. Register for free to be notified of new installments. In theory, calculatingRead More
Careful Consideration of Anilox Pre-Coating Systems for Inkjet
October 30, 2017Anilox coating systems apply a precisely measured and consistent level of coating to a printed surface. The process uses an anilox roll, which is a hard cylinder with metal coreRead More
Inkjet for Direct Marketing Print– What Matters?
October 20, 2017The market for direct marketing print is a good news – bad news story. Bad news: according to the Direct Marketing Association and the USPS, the volume of direct mailRead More
What Inkjet Specifications Can Tell You
October 10, 2017…and what they can’t. I posted an open letter to inkjet OEMs last week and got some feedback on the specifications people find most important when comparing production inkjet technology.Read More
Action at a Distance: Inkjet’s Original Sin
September 19, 2017Guest Contributor: Chris Lynn, Hillam Technology Partners, LLC Inkjet printing is action at a distance. A convulsion of the piezo or a belch in the silicon chamber causes a dropletRead More
Components of Inkjet Print Quality
August 28, 2017What determines production inkjet print quality? This is a complex question which can’t be answered by simply looking at the published spec sheet for a device. Many OEM’s tout higherRead More
Transaction, Transpromo, Transitional Printing – What Matters?
August 10, 2017Transaction print, transpromo and transitional print are all ways of talking about segments of the production print market that produce statements, invoices, letters, notices and other important customer communications. TheRead More
Inkjet Book Printing – What Matters?
August 1, 2017Discussion of the key performance indicators (KPIs) and segment definitions that matter when evaluating equipment for inkjet book printing. Read More
Understanding the Gray Areas of Inkjet – Grayscale
July 17, 2017Often when people talk about the capabilities of an inkjet printer, they will discuss print quality in terms of dots per inch and the number of colors available, but thisRead More
Customer Education Checklist for Inkjet
July 10, 2017We’ve provided a customer education checklist because we want you to make creating an inkjet customer education plan a priority. Creating a solid customer education plan has many potential benefits forRead More
Premium Tool – Customizable Process Color Guide
June 5, 2017Color matching tools are an important part of any inkjet customer education program, so we are continually adding tools to help you communicate with customers. Previously we provided a freeRead More
Understanding Linearization
June 1, 2017The key to print quality and color management is controlling the migration of the ink into the paper. The size of the drops jetted along with the pattern which forms upon contactRead More
RFP Checklist – Software Requirements
May 24, 2017Software requirements are critical to getting the most out of an inkjet solution. We recommend doing a thorough SW analysis before investing in hardware. Premium members can access the Inkjet Insight Software Requirements Worksheet here. Read More
Inkjet Insight Tint Book – Free Tool
May 15, 2017Pretty much everyone is familiar with the Pantone swatch / tint book which shows the CMYK, RGB and HTML values used to reproduce each swatch color, or tint, as accurately as possible in standard print and onscreen applications. The problem is that production inkjet is not really a “standard” print application. Read More
Proper Packaging of Design Files
May 3, 2017Design files can be pretty complex. A typical file could contain hundreds or thousands of detailed elements such as font families, lines, vignettes plus drawn and linked elements such as logos and photos. These may be created in multiple formats housing extremely detailed dither and color data. Designers sometimes go to painstaking detail to create a particular effect. Read More
Setting Paper Evaluation Requirements
May 1, 2017Before you start any paper trials, know what you’re finished product goals will be and design your trial around them. Paper evaluation needs to consider a broad array of issues beyond compatibility with a specific device. If you don't consider the big picture, you can waste a lot of time testing papers or miss out on opportunities to save money and improve quality.
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RFPs, RFIs, RFQs and Cutting to the Chase
May 1, 2017An in-house print operation at a large insurance organization may have very different requirements for soliciting bids for large equipment purchases than a privately-held, mid-sized printing firm. Read More
Understanding the TAPPI Roll Identifier
April 27, 2017TAPPI is the technical arm of the American Pulp and Paper Association. They are an ANSI-Certified Standards development organization, and one of the standards that they have developed is theRead More
RFP Checklist: Production Inkjet Requirements
March 20, 2017Before you can effectively research your production inkjet options, you need to consider the features that are most important. That, of course, is dependent on the volumes you need to support, the types of applications those volumes represent and whether those volumes are existing business that needs to be transitioned or new business for your organization. Read More
Premium Customizable Fingerprint Files
March 16, 2017Fingerprints are an indispensable way to help your customers understand the benefits of inkjet and the paper selected for a particular job. Read More
Print Quality Analysis Methodology
March 14, 2017Methodology for Print Quality Analysis Reports To assist the production inkjet user community with the daunting task of paper testing Inkjet Insight, through extensive continuous testing, is producing PrintRead More
Understanding the “Two-Sided” Effect
March 10, 2017Have you ever completed a custom profile of your paper to only find out that when printed, one side looks darker than the other? You may notice that the ink densities are different, but may also see a visual color and perhaps a mottle, line and text clarity difference. Read More
Diagnosing Cross-Process Density Shifts
March 8, 2017If you see any signs of cross-process density shift, get a baseline by running a diagnostic test pattern on a high holdout inkjet coated sheet. Read More
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