High speed inkjet printing and "highly optimized media"

Recently we discussed the relationship between inkjet paper and quality. This is important for all inkjets but will become much more important as high speed inkjet presses come to market. If you own a small inkjet in your office or home you already know this. But if you don’t there is a trade off between papers designed to increase the quality of inkjet printing and the cost for those papers.

The quality difference seen when comparing regular copier paper to special inkjet papers shows one of the challenges of printing with inkjet – ink absorption. Simply the spread of the inkjet dots can create a number of issues and one is known as ink “show through” (showing through from the other side of the page).

As a result, at the Print 09 show you may start to hear manufacturers use terms such as "highly optimized media." The question is what does that mean. As one of the manufacturers said to me recently:

"Anyone can use very expensive micro porous photo medias to get surprisingly good results with inkjet – for our category of product the real challenge is to get media solutions that support three vectors:

• Works well at high speed on a continuous feed platform
• Economics that work as a system (consumables, services)
• Sourcing that works for commercial printers 

For us, the objective is getting all three right."

Therefore, when you go to the show and are evaluating the quality of the new inkjet presses, remember to keep in mind the cost of the paper. While quality is very important, cost is too.

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