Development of Drying Technology for High Speed Inkjet Printer

Abstract

When printing on paper with a conventional water-based inkjet printer, there was a problem that wavy wrinkles (cockling) occurred on the paper and the print quality degraded. This is because the image area and the non-image area are stretched unevenly as the paper absorbs the ink. Cockling occurred especially when high-density images were printed or when thin paper was used, and it was difficult to prevent this with conventional technology. In order to solve this problem, we have developed a unique drying technology that repeatedly nips paper to multiple heating rollers and extends the drying distance. RICOH Pro VC70000, a high-speed full-color inkjet printing system for continuous paper equipped with this technology, suppresses cockling even when high-density images are printed or when thin paper is used. Furthermore, it has become possible to improve printing speed and image quality with space and energy saving.