Nanographic Printing Presses

Landa's Breakthrough Nanographic Printing Presses

Thursday, May 03, 2012

Press release from the issuing company

Landa Corporation today announced the details of its groundbreaking Landa Nanographic Printing Presses that are set to transform mainstream commercial, packaging and publishing markets. With output speeds comparable to offset presses and employing NanoInk colorants that create unprecedented image qualities, the Landa Nanographic Printing Press portfolio is set to fundamentally change printing as we know it.

Landa Founder, Chairman and CEO Benny Landa says, "Nanography is a new technology for applying ink to paper. In developing Landa Nanographic Printing we had to re-think and reinvent the printing press. The result is digital printing with remarkable performance - from a family of presses that share stunning ergonomic design, a small footprint and some of the most advanced user functionality available in the market."

Landa Nanographic Printing Presses

At drupa 2012, Landa is unveiling a family of six Nanographic Printing presses - three sheetfed and three web presses - that enable print providers to produce short-to-medium run lengths at unmatched cost-per-page.

Each of the three sheetfed presses can print in up to eight colors and can use spot and specialty colors for a range of applications including general commercial printing, marketing collateral, medium-run books and manuals, direct mail and short-run folding cartons:

• The Landa S5 Nanographic Printing Press is a B3 (20 in.) entry-level press for fast and easy transition to digital production. The Landa S5 can print single-side at speeds of up to 11,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf media (60-350 gsm).
• The Landa S7 Nanographic Printing Press is the most productive B2 (29 in.) digital production press on the market. It is capable of single- or double-sided printing at speeds of up to 12,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf media (60-350 gsm).
• The Landa S10 Nanographic Printing Press is the market's first B1 (41 in.) digital production press. It is able to print single-side or double-side at up to 13,000 SPH on any off-the-shelf stock (60-400 gsm). A straight printing (simplex) model for folding carton operates at up to 6,500 SPH on virgin and recycled carton board, metalized stock (200-1000 micron thickness) and plastic foils.

The three web presses can print in up to eight colors and are aimed at commercial printing, publishing, labels, and flexible packaging:   

• The Landa W5 Nanographic Printing Press is a 560 mm (22 in.) web width press capable of single-sided printing at up to 200 m/min (656 ft/min) on plastic films and shrink sleeves (12 to 250 microns) and on label stocks, tube stocks,aluminum foil and paper (50 to 300 microns).
• The Landa W10 Nanographic Printing Press is a 1,020 mm (40 in.) web width press, capable of single-sided printing at up to 200 m/min (656 ft/min) on film stock (12-250 microns) and on paper (50-300 microns). As Landa NanoInk will be FDA-compliant for food packaging, the W10 should be of interest to mainstream packaging converters.
• The Landa W50 Nanographic Printing Press is a 560 mm (22 in.) web width press for high-volume, digital production and is capable of double-sided printing at up to 200 m/min (656 ft/min) on any coated or uncoated paper (40-300 gsm). It is ideally suited for publishing books, magazines, periodicals, annual reports, journals, directories, manuals, direct mail with personalization and versioning... and more.

"Landa Nanographic Printing Presses are intended not to replace offset printing, but to complement it. For the foreseeable future, offset printing will continue to be the preferred method for producing run lengths of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands," says Benny Landa. "But the market is demanding shorter and shorter run lengths - and that's where Nanography comes in - to enable print service providers to produce those short to medium run lengths economically - at offset speeds. That's what we mean when we say that Landa Nanographic Printing brings digital to the mainstream."

The Nanographic Printing Process

At the heart of the Nanographic Printing process are Landa NanoInk colorants. Comprised of pigment particles only tens of nanometers in size (1 nanometer is about 100,000 times thinner than a human hair), these nano-pigments are extremely powerful absorbers of light and enable unprecedented image qualities. Landa Nanographic Printing is characterized by ultra-sharp dots of extremely high uniformity, high gloss fidelity and the broadest color gamut of any four-color printing process.

Nanographic Printing begins with the ejection of billions of microscopic droplets of water-based Landa NanoInk onto a heated blanket conveyor belt. Each droplet of aqueous NanoInk lands at a precise location on the belt, creating the color image. As the water evaporates, the ink becomes an ultra-thin dry polymeric film, less than half the thickness of offset images.

The resulting image is then transferred to any kind of ordinary paper, coated or uncoated, or onto any plastic packaging film - without requiring pre-treatment. The NanoInk film image instantaneously bonds to the surface; forming a tough, abrasion-resistant, laminated layer that doesn't leave any residual ink on the blanket.

Since NanoInk images are already dry, there is no need for post drying. Doubled-sided printing becomes simple and printed goods can be immediately handled, right off the press, even when using the most aggressive finishing equipment.

Unique Graphic User Interface

The stunning new design of the Landa Nanographic Printing Press features the Landa Touchscreen, an oversized user interface that enables even an untrained operator to quickly master the press. Press controls appear both on the left and right sides of the screen to allow convenient operation from either the feeder or delivery end of the press.

The right side of the display is dedicated to job management. Here, the operator can easily organize the optimum job sequences for maximum press utilization aided by one of the many built-in job management tools. The left side of the touchscreen is dedicated to press functions. Real time graphics show the status of all press functions and stream live video images of each of the key stations including sheet feeding, image transfer and sheet delivery. Every function, such as ink levels, paper supply, and operational status, are clearly and intuitively displayed.

Due to the high degree of automation on Landa Nanographic Printing Presses, a single operator can manage two, three or even four presses at a time. When the operator leaves the press, the display switches to Vital Signs Mode, in which key indicators are presented in large fonts that can be easily read from 50 meters away. In addition, the entire user interface is duplicated on a portable touchscreen tablet that can be magnetically attached to the press at any convenient location.