By DPS Staff
Landa Digital Printing hosted over 60 customers and prospects at its headquarters in Rehovot, Israel from September 18 to 20, 2019. The Landa VIP event marked the beginning of the production phase of the Landa S10 Nanographic Printing Press and Landa S10P Nanographic Printing Press with perfector and celebrated worldwide placements of the technology.
The Nanographic Printing Process—or Nanography—was introduced at Drupa 2012. The company is progressing from beta testing to commercialization, with units in full production today. The technology is officially experiencing a global roll out, with several presses already installed in Germany, Israel, Switzerland, Mexico, and the U.S. Additional presses are on their way to China, France, and the U.K.
Nanography targets all print markets. The Landa S10 is engineered for packaging and converting as well as point of purchase/point of sale markets. The Landa S10P is designed for the range of commercial print markets, including double-sided applications. Both the S10 and S10P print 6,500 B1 sheets per hour (sph).
Above: An image of the Landa S10 Nanographic Printing Press.
The Landa Story and Technology
Benny Landa, chairman, Landa Corporation, became renowned in the print industry for his part in the digital print movement when his company, Indigo, launched the e-Print 1000 digital color printing press in 1993. HP acquired Indigo in 2001. In 2012 Landa resurfaced at drupa with the introduction of the Landa Nanographic Printing press, which would address the most popular yet least profitable print segment—the 1,000 to 10,000 run.
Nanography works by ejecting Landa’s proprietary NanoInk onto a heated blanket, where a resulting film is then transferred to the substrate. The water-based ink features nano-pigment particles that measure tens of nanometers in size. The blanket is positioned one to two millimeters away from the ink ejectors, which are mounted on eight print bars. As the droplets land on the blanket, they lose water and transform into an ultra-thin, dry polymeric film. At transfer, the film makes contact with the substrate, instantly bonding to it without penetrating it.
Quality is another critical selling point. The small, consistent size of the Landa NanoInk pigments allows Nanography to achieve a superior light dynamic range, according to the company. Landa’s CMYK color palette is developed to cover 84 percent of Pantone colors, and its CMYK+OBG palette covers 96 percent of all Pantone colors.
Nanography is also touted for its economics. The ability to print onto any substrate provides an advantage over systems that require a special coating or primer. Further, NanoInk solutions are water-based and use less ink as compared to traditional offset for the same image.
The company collaborates with technology partners to create the Landa S10 and S10P, including Komori for the paper transfer and delivery systems, EFI for an advanced Fiery digital front end specifically designed to handle the throughput requirements, and Fujifilm Dimatix SAMBA piezoelectric drop on demand printheads.
Driving Digital Forward
In the commercial print space, offset is still the go-to technology. According to Landa research, 50 trillion pages of commercial print pages are printed conventionally today. Only 1.4 trillion—or three percent—are digitally printed. However, with Nanography—starting with the S10 and S10P, Landa promises high-quality, digital output at speeds of up to 6,500 B1 sph on any off-the-shelf substrate. The Landa presses will ultimately be offered with higher-run speeds of up to 13,000 sph, which the company has already demonstrated.
The Landa VIP event clearly signified the passion that Benny Landa and his team bring to their technology and the overall industry. The company works diligently with every customer to ensure their success. This is a sentiment echoed by the current investors in the technology, who attest that the team works tirelessly to fix any production challenges encountered.
Landa continues to sign on new customers worldwide and plans to showcase its line of printing presses at the upcoming drupa 2020 trade fair, which takes place in Düsseldorf, Germany from June 16 to 26.
Nov2019, DPS Magazine
