Inkjet & Digital Printing

Automotive glass printing in flying alternation

Thursday 26. September 2019 - At Vitrum 2019 glass printing fair, which will take place from 1 to 4 October in the northern Italian metropolis of Milan, THIEME will be presenting an innovation for digital printing of automotive glass: thanks to automatic position recognition, it is possible to print on various components with minimum set-up times.

At Vitrum 2019 THIEME presents an innovative digital printing system with automatic position detection.
The position recognition system, which works with an optical scanner, makes it possible to print automotive glass of different sizes and formats “on the fly”, with set-up times of no more than two minutes. The respective part position is automatically determined during feeding and transferred to the machine control system. Both x and y positions as well as rotary positions are detected with an accuracy of ± 0.1 mm. When the glass reaches the printing station, the position is already in the associated RIP file so that the printing process can start immediately without any further mechanical alignment.
The fully encapsulated digital printing system is available in two versions: The THIEME PW260 is equipped with a highly productive “Page-Wide” print shuttle with 24 print heads, while the THIEME SR450 operates in “Step & Repeat” mode and can therefore print large formats up to 1,700 mm. Both machines also feature a “multi-pass” print mode for maximum print quality at minimum cycle times, with a print resolution of 800 x 800 dpi for imaging the finest structures. Standard equipment also includes a fully automatic printhead cleaning system for consistent print quality. The printing systems are operated simply and ergonomically via a Siemens control terminal.
“In combination with our proven glass transport solutions, highly productive, automated production processes for printing automotive glass can be realized with our new digital printing system,” explains Christian Schweickert of Thieme Sales. “Automatic position detection significantly reduces makeready times and thus increases the throughput of the system.
A prototype of the innovative digital printing system will be on display at the Thieme stand at Vitrum 2019, so that interested visitors can see for themselves the advantages of automatic position detection and other productivity-enhancing components.