Jason Oliver: ‘We take a 3D object and we print on it – that’s the fourth dimension’

 

Simon Eccles interviews Jason Oliver, Heidelberg’s head of digital, about his company’s big plans to move into direct printing onto shaped substrates.

At this month’s InPrint show in Munich, Heidelberg will unveil the latest step forward in its 4D programme of direct-to-shape printers. This is the four-colour Jetmaster Dimension 250 4D, a robotic UV inkjet printer that can print onto three-dimensional shaped objects up to 250 mm diameter.

One of the first orders is for a German start-up in food retailing that will use it in-store, offering personalised packaging to customers who can watch the process and take it away with them.

Last year the company unveiled a black-only Jetmaster Dimension and put the first two of them into commercial users, BVD Druck & Verlag in Liechtenstein and Druckhaus Mainfranken in Germany, which prints for web to print company Flyeralarm. Both offer personalised footballs that can be ordered online for roughly €100 each (about £70). That is a lot for a football, which indicates an encouragingly healthy margin. BVD has now ordered a colour machine.

Jason Oliver is Heidelberg’s head of digital. He told Digital Printer that the company has big plans for direct-to-shape, which it predicts will be an important new sector of printing. Why call it 4D? ‘Simple – we take a 3D object and we print on it – that’s the fourth dimension, the decoration, providing colour and design,’ Mr Oliver said.

‘We break it into two areas. One is production line print, which are integrated systems where we use inkjet heads and direct a shaped object towards these. The other side is more retail, either in-store or web to print, like what we have been doing at BVD and Druckhaus Mainfranken.’

Direct to bottle

At least one production line system already uses 4D systems: the DecoType system developed by German bottling lines producer Krones. ‘They announced it at Drinktec as a Heidelberg co-operation with Krones,’ said Mr Oliver. This uses vertically arranged Xaar 1002 print heads firing horizontally onto the sides of cylindrical or oval plastic bottles, which rotate as they pass.

‘The other part of that business would include anything from airplanes to cars, to shoes, you name it,’ Mr Oliver said. ‘In some of those we already have paid projects underway. We have large and small robots and we are doing 3D imaging, we are building into slow and high speed production lines, all different kinds of direct printing on shaped objects. Instead of labels or pad printing, or some kind of painting devices, manufacturers are looking at inkjet to decorate objects. We intend to be a big player in that space.

‘Inkjet gives a lot of flexibility when ordering raw materials, instead of ordering pre-coloured. So you can buy plain white or uncoloured raw material and limit your waste that way, and limit your inventory. It’s one of the biggest drivers. Many industries are going to shift to decoration and colour using inkjet and we see huge opportunities.’

Commercial goods

The commercial side of direct-to-shape, as Heidelberg sees it, has a lot in common with today’s markets for high margin photobooks or personalised gift and promotional goods. Mr Oliver said: ‘We see our current customers have a lot of interest in this; not all of them but more the web to print type guys, looking at new channels.’

Printing onto what? ‘The things that we are testing include motorcycle helmets, skateboards, high end tools, crates for beer, different objects for holding everything from food to something more special.’

Larger systems are planned for announcement at drupa next year, including one for the automotive sector. ‘We’ll release a machine that moves in a full six axes and will handle much larger objects. Not a production line but something that you can put a metre wide object into. Think of beer kegs, something like that.’

What is all this likely to cost? Mr Oliver says that there is no established price for a Jetmaster Direct as it will be supplied on a click charge basis, similar to many conventional digital presses. In the commercial market, the prospect of higher margins makes this attractive, he feels. ‘A piece of paper costs nothing to produce or print today. But a motorcycle helmet or a skateboard is a pretty high-end item and if you can personalise it, then instead of paying an extra cent for a personalised piece of paper, then you are talking about paying an extra Euro or two. If you had the chance to get a skateboard with your own custom design on it, would you pay 10, 20 or 30 Euros more? We’re just asking the customer to pay us a piece of that.’