Why don't more inkjet printers have white ink?

Because the media itself is white. So up to now there has not been a large enough market for printing with white ink on dark materials, metal foil, or other non-white materials. But now that UV-curable printers can print onto stone, wood, leather and other objects that are not white, it becomes imperative to develop a white ink.

Durst Rho 205 UV white Ink printer

Why it is so hard to make UV-curable inkjet printers with white ink?

Titanium dioxide is not easy to keep properly mixed. So unless your printer has a means to keep it stirred, the white ink may cause problems. This is really a good case of "stirred not shaken" since shaking the ink too much is not good for it either.

We too are curious about why more UV-curable inkjet printers don't offer white ink. So we are adding answers to this query to our FLAAR Reports on UV-curable flatbed inkjet printers. We are proud that currently FLAAR has the most comprehensive coverage of UV-curable inkjet printers available. But more importantly, FLAAR is independent, so our reports can reveal the pros and cons of UV-curable technology.

The independent nature of FLAAR Reports is crucial, because some UV-curable ink flatbed printer manufacturers are telling customers that white ink does not work. Their lament sounds like sour grapes because they can’t afford to add white ink to their own printers. So we have checked out the truth about white ink, and have the results in our FLAAR Report on white UV-curable ink.

If you are about to spend almost half a million dollars, surely it is worthwhile making an initial investment in the FLAAR Reports on UV-curable inkjet printers.

Dr Hellmuth spent 10 days at DRUPA '04 trade show in Germany rooting out information and documentation on inkjet printers. Professor Hellmuth has attended the IMI technical conferences on UV-curable ink technology. Nicholas has been at every ISA, SGIA, PMA, GraphExpo, Graphics of the America and Photokina to check out the UV-curable inkjet printers.

If you wish a private discrete consultant to help your screen printing company or sign shop decide what UV-curable ink printer to select, you can arrange for Dr Hellmuth to come to your offices anywhere in the world. Plus you can hire Nicholas to accompany you to the next trade show and perhaps get access to full disclosure that you might not get as a regular visitor.

But first, be sure to arm yourself with the FLAAR Reports on UV-curable inkjet printing. We reveal which printers use white, whether it works or not, and generally help you see the results of using white UV-curable ink in flatbed and roll-to-roll wide format printers. This report will be updated significantly this autumn, based on the following research:

• two days at the Zund international headquarters including doing test prints in the Zund factory
• a day inside the R&D areas of the NUR factory in Israel, including inspecting printing with white ink
• a day at VUTEk world headquarters including inspecting white layering techniques

The future of white ink is a lot brighter than most people predicted. FLAAR will be addressing this with special projects dedicated to white ink this autumn and winter.

Why should you be wary of white ink offered by Chinese UV printers?

There are many reasons why white ink does not function; one is lack of experience in handling it. Chinese UV printers have so many issues, weaknesses, and problems, that them trying to add white ink and varnish is merely adding more features that will not likely function adequately. But everything improves with experience, so we will be testing white ink on the better brands of Chinese printers as soon as this becomes realistic (requires visits to demo centers, which implies a research budget).

Why has white solvent ink never been successful?

Two solvent ink printer manufacturers have attempted to offer white ink for their solvent printers. Neither has been successful. We mention this in our FLAAR Report on ISA 2005 trade show. Here two companies showed eco-solvent ink in white.