Food Grade Printing with the N-Series
Have you ever seen an egg or piece of meat with a mark printed on it and wondered, 'can I eat that?'. The answer is, yes, you can. The mark on your...
It's more than likely that every one of us uses a product that a CIJ printer has marked, whether it's an item of food in our meal or a cosmetic product we use. Continuous inkjet printers impact our everyday lives without most of us even realising it, they are primarily used to print traceability information onto products for safety and security reasons.
Continuous inkjet technology is still the market leader for printing these marks on products, but it's much more than just dates that these printers are capable of. From 5 lines of text to images and logos, these versatile machines are used in nearly every industry at some stage.
So what can be printed with our N32 CIJ printer:
One of the most utilised features of CIJ technology is to print both text and numbers on products, in everyday life, you can see this combination printed in the form of best-before dates on perishable food items. The N32 continuous inkjet printer can print 1 - 5 lines of text on products as they move along a production line at speeds of up to 2000ft/minute (600m/minute). With CIJ printers either the product or the printhead needs to be moving and can be between 0.5" - 2" away from the product to print.
Quick response codes are a type of matrix barcode and are machine-readable optical labels that contain information about the item on which it is printed. Printing a QR Code onto products allows the manufacturer to store greater amounts of data efficiently and often points to a website or application to allow the end user to access this information. Originally QR Codes were used in vehicle manufacturing to track parts but are now part of day-to-day life for everybody.
We've already covered the fact that CIJ printers can print alphanumerics, but in the case of best-before dates, the production run will print the same code on every product that is manufactured together. The N32 is also capable of printing serialisations in these alphanumerics, this is especially useful for lot coding or batch coding products giving each product or batch a different code to the previous product that passed the printhead. This allows each product to have a completely unique mark printed onto it allowing for traceability of each product.
Barcodes are probably the most instantly recognisable mark on this list, from use in the retail sector as a way of recalling product and price information to uses in warehouses for location tracking and stock control. It's likely that each one of us handles a product with a barcode on it every single day. Barcodes are used on primary and secondary packaging and are usually represented by varying the size, width and spacing on parallel lines. CIJ printers are used to print barcodes onto different packaging and materials and allow for consistent, legible marks every time.
Manufacturers who have to conform to legal requirements often display official marks or logos, showing that they are compliant. The British Lion is the UK's most successful food safety scheme and in order for an egg to carry the British Lion mark it must have been produced under the stringent requirements of the British Lion Code of Practice. CIJ Printers are capable of printing logos or images onto products at a height of 32 pixels, allowing the producer to mark their products in accordance with local regulations and legal requirements.
When it comes to extrusion marking, sometimes the manufacturer wants to mark indicating spacing. This could be anything from a single line, a dot or a mix of everything above at a certain distance. As products have to be moving for CIJ printers to work, the product may pass underneath the printhead and the printer can mark at interval gaps, for example the manufacturer may want to leave a mark at a meter gap, the product will move 1m and the printer will mark the required mark at the 1m point.
Our N32 CIJ printer starts at £4,995 and is used by a wide variety of industries from food and beverage manufacturing, cosmetic producers to the construction industry. To find out more or to get a 7-day free no-obligation trial of our CIJ printer, click the button below.
For Enquiries:
Call: +44 (0)1948 662629
Email: enquiries@needham-ink.com
Have you ever seen an egg or piece of meat with a mark printed on it and wondered, 'can I eat that?'. The answer is, yes, you can. The mark on your...
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