Whether you’re a food manufacturer that needs variable information and barcodes on packages or a pharmaceutical company that requires clear expiration labeling, you need the proper equipment and expertise to do the job. You’ll need an industrial printer that prints high-quality text that won’t smudge or look illegible.
So, let’s seek advice on choosing the right printing equipment for your business needs. From inkjet printers to laser coders, you’ll need a partner to help you choose the right equipment, so you achieve a beautiful mark on all your products.
What Are Industrial Printing Solutions?
When it comes to printing, most people think of residential printers that operate at home or big commercial printers for office operations. However, there’s more to printing than computer paper and cardstock. Regarding industrial printing solutions, there are additional steps to consider for accurate printing and good quality.
Packaging coding solutions and printing systems will help ensure that products and substrates don’t have unreadable or incorrect labeling for mass markets. Printing solutions offer quicker business performance and cater to multiple industries, from food and beverage, pharmaceuticals, and cosmetics.
Understand Industrial Printing Equipment
There are numerous considerations when it comes to printing. From a business standpoint, you want to provide clear, high-resolution data on different substrates, such as expiration dates, bar codes, or times and dates.
Continuous Ink Jet
Continuous Ink Jet, also known as CIJ, is ink that gets pumped from an ink reservoir, which is then ejected through a nozzle to create a constant jet of ink. Once the ink production starts, the ink jet becomes broken into many tiny ink droplets via high-frequency vibration. From there, they become charged electrodes.
Continuous Ink Jet applications work in various ways, such as printing text and producing graphics or images onto different packaging types or surfaces. They’re widely used in the food and beverage industries, but are also used in pharmaceutical, cable and pipe manufacturing.
Laser Coders
Laser coders allow a high-resolution, permanent mark for printing text, time, date, serial numbers, and bar codes on packages and products. Laser coding makes for quick, non-contact line and text applications compared to other coding systems.
There are two main ways laser coders mark a surface: engraving and ablation. While engraving uses an energy beam to melt or etch fine grooves in a specific substrate, ablation removes a layer of material from a surface to create texts and lines.
Large Character Box Printers
Large Character Box Printers, also known as LCM, are industrial printers that remove the need for a labeler, as they print directly onto corrugated surfaces. They’re a cost-effective alternative to preprinted boxes and can make graphics up to 2.76 inches high. They can be printed on different surfaces, such as paper, wood, and cardstock.
These printers come with many benefits for the printing and manufacturing business. Some benefits include easy-to-control operational use to prevent coding mistakes, providing a clear and quality image in high resolution, and nozzle protection for high printing performance.
Thermal Transfer Overprinters
Thermal Transfer Overprinters, also known as TTOs, offer a great printing solution onto flexible packaging across a wide variety of industrial applications. The concept of thermal transfer printing involves using a heated printhead that applies heat to a ribbon. As a result, it transfers the ink onto the packaging by physically stamping the substrate with the printhead. It helps create a durable and high-quality mark specifically for flexible packaging applications.
There are various substrates that thermal transfer printing effectively works with, including pouches, bags, flow wrap, labels, and more. While it’s low-cost for ownership, it also helps increase uptime and is easy to use.
Industries That Rely on Industrial Printing
Many industries require quality printing for labels, lines of text, and graphics. From food and beverage to pharmaceuticals, presentation is essential for customer satisfaction and FDA requirements.
Food and Beverage
The food and beverage industry heavily relies on product dating and lot number tracing to make a trustworthy product and facilitate internal tracing. From jars of baby food to everyone’s favorite soda, the date codes and lot numbers must look crisp and professional to help consumers and retailers decide when food is of the best quality. Except for infant formula, dates are not an indicator of the product’s safety and are not required by Federal law.
There are no universally accepted descriptions used on food labels for expiration dating in the United States. There is a variety of these descriptions, such as use-by, sell-by, freeze-by, or best-if-used-before dates.
Pharmaceuticals
To assure that a drug product meets applicable standards of identity, strength, quality, and purity at the time of use, it bears an expiration date determined by appropriate stability testing described in section 211.137 of the Code of Federal Regulations.
According to the US FDA, a batch means a specific quantity of a drug that is intended to have uniform character and quality. Having a permanent coded lot number means the drug is produced according to a single manufacturing order during the same cycle of manufacturing. A batch therefore is a specific amount of an API or other material that is processed in one or more ways to demonstrate the homogeneity of the product.
Specifications for Printing
Printing Size and Quality
When it comes to industrial printing, you need to know the surface sizes you’re working with and the quality it needs for readability. For example, if your application requires a thermal transfer overprinter printing on a perimeter greater than 3 inches, you need a larger thermal transfer machine to match the appropriate height and width.
Additionally, the quality of the print is immensely crucial when it comes to printing on various types of substrates. The ribbon quality might change depending on the substrate’s quality, texture, and color.
Printing Surfaces
In the manufacturing business, you will be working with various surfaces, such as plastic, metal, cardboard, aluminum, and more. You’ll need the appropriate printing solution that works with your specific surfaces.
User Experience
One of the last pieces of advice for finding the right printing equipment is usability. Your industrial printers need an easy user interface to prevent human errors or overwhelming choice-making options. Ideally, industrial printers with touchscreens help create fewer errors and make for a hassle-free operation, no matter how experienced the user might be.
You can create clear product shelf life and lot number information for your manufacturing business with the proper printing equipment. At Factronics USA, we carry a variety of inkjet printers, laser coders, inspection systems, and so much more. Our industrial printers make for clear, legible data that businesses can understand. If you have any questions about our products, please contact us today to help you get started!
