At the heights of greatness

I have covered lots of equipment in these Under the Hood articles where I am able to extol the virtues of  kit fitting into the smallest of sections of a print shop. There is lots of printing equipment of this stature, yet several can tick many production boxes and hold useful asset value.

However, if you wish to print an area the size of a standard football pitch, in one shift, and in vivid five or six colours, then clearly you need to significantly ‘up the machine ante’, along with the space needed. If you have the need, and the space, then this article may be of interest as we are looking at the Onset X3 from Inca as this UV inkjet printer can print up to a staggering 900sq m/h.

It is easy to be overwhelmed by numbers, but they can add context to the image you are trying to develop, so here goes. The Onset X3 has over 25,800 parts in it, is 12.5m (41?) long, has 1.5km (0.9 miles) of cabling, takes 18 days to build, and the superstructure takes six people to move it ready for assembly. Clearly this is a machine that can print a significant amount of substrate.


At the heart of the Onset X3 is a very large print head assembly. There are 84 piezoelectric DOD (drop-on-demand) inkjet print heads, process colours (CMYK), with a double white and orange. As standard that equates to three black, three cyan, three magenta, and three yellow heads with either two white heads or one additional orange head. The droplet size can be altered from 14 picolitres to 27 picolitres and up to a massive 40 picolitres when printing white inks.

Make your choice

Given you are printing so much material at speed, Inca has looked into how to deploy the Fujifilm Uvjet inks in the most effective way possible. They have developed a piece of software called Tier Drop which interacts with the RIP to change the ink droplet size, so the printer can choose to either print with a larger droplet for faster printing (accepting a slight drop in print quality) or a smaller droplet, reduced speed, but higher print quality.

Inca’s Tier Drop software is able to adjust from a standard droplet size for a mix of speed and quality, big droplet size when bold or larger print is needed and then the small droplet size for fine print when the viewer is closer to the finished product.

Those of you who have read any of my articles before know I am a strong advocate that the best of engineering solutions for efficiency is often found in the margins. When you are able to produce as much printed material as the Onset X3 can, even a single percentage point saving on ink will see a large upside in efficiency when you are talking production output up to 900sq m/h.

As with a number of manufacturers, Inca utilises a number of inline tools to maintain optimal condition of the ink heads. Should a nozzle be displaced or unstable, others undertake the task of the ineffective one. The maintenance of the nozzles is also undertaken on the fly and a software scan of a test pattern can make all the necessary corrections to maintain print quality.

Finally there is an automated cleaning station, which helps maintain all of the print heads without operator intervention. Software called Maintenance Scheduler displays on the GUI (graphical user interface) the machine planned tasks for the operator, and when they are completed it logs them so they can be tracked or monitored.

Once set down the ink is dried by a series of mercury UV lamp heads, which are at the full width of the machine. This will allow print to be deployed and dried bi-directionally in matt satin or vibrant colours. Sensors check the amount of UV light used and this interacts with the maintenance software to ensure the ink heads are kept in an optimal condition.

Clever design

If we refer back to our football pitch output scale of production, which is obviously a very large footprint of substrate to be printed on: the maximum sheet size is a massive 3.22 x 1.6m (10.56 x 5.24´). The sheet passes a small number of times under the print head depending on image, which equates to up to a maximum of 180 full sheet lay downs per hour.

With the sizes of the sheets, the print quality can be easily affected if the distance between the sheet and the nozzle changes. Even tenths of parts of a millimetre will change completely the printed output and this is the second key element to the very clever Inca design.

Take the covers off the Onset X3’s substrate transport system and you will see a mass of steel box sections all welded together of which Robert Stephenson would be proud. There is a reason for this massive structure. This cleverly designed and manufactured main bed for the Onset X3 means that even if you lifted one corner of it, the whole main framework would move as one and not twist or bend.


The mass of steel serves to support the vacuum bed, which is moved up and back on captive ball race linear bearings on precision ground raceways. This stable structure maintains the level of the vacuum table, which in turn preserves the distance between the inkjet nozzle. With this movement limited to minuscule amounts, if any at all, print droplet pattern from top of a 3.22mm sheet to the bottom of it is identical.

Looking at the other components on the main framework and vacuum bed, you can clearly see they are designed with longevity and accuracy in mind. This means that the high speeds required for our printed football pitch can be reproduced time and time again.

Another clever aspect of the design is the engineers at Inca have clearly developed the series of machines in a modular format. Changes to the business can be accommodated by upgrades and improvements.

So, what else makes this machine a stand out performer in this high-volume market?

To start with, the vacuum bed has 25 zones and a powerful vacuum system to hold substrates of up to 50mm in thickness. To help with productivity, the bed can be masked to reduce set up times and assist with security of each sheet.

If needed, this very industrial piece of equipment comes with some equally industrial robotic automation. If we are to have that football pitch printed on time, then sheets will need to be loaded and offloaded very quickly and efficiently. Substrate thickness is limited to 18mm for this system, but with a large market for this machine being point-of-sale materials, this robotic material management system really needs to be checked out.

The digital interface is also intuitive and easy to use, and wraps all of the software tools we have discussed at the press of a virtual button. It is a pleasure to see that companies like Inca are building world class printing equipment from places like Cambridge. The Onset X3 is only one of the stable, any of which can stand side by side next to any of the print giant’s machinery.

Brian Sims, principal consultant, Metis Print Consultancy, www.metis-uk.eu


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