Landa Corporation has 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 colours and can use spot and specialty colours for a range of applications including general commercial printing, marketing collaterals, medium-run books and manuals, direct mail and short-run folding cartons:
The three web presses can print in up to eight colours and are aimed at commercial printing, publishing, labels, and flexible packaging:
“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 nanometres 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 characterised by ultra-sharp dots of extremely high uniformity, high gloss fidelity and the broadest colour gamut of any four-colour 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 colour 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 without leaving any residual ink on the blanket.
Since NanoInk images are already dry, there is no need for post drying. Two-sided printing becomes simple and printed goods can be immediately handled, right off the press, even in the most aggressive finishing equipment.
Unique Graphic User Interface
The stunning new design of the Landa Nanographic Printing Press features the Landa Touchscreen, an oversize 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 enable 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 organise the optimum job sequences for maximum press utilisation aided by one of the many built-in job management tools. The left side of the touchscreen is dedicated to press functions. Realtime 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 metres away. In addition, the entire user interface is duplicated on a portable touchscreen tablet that is magnetically attached to the press at any convenient location.