Some wide format applications, like banner stands, benefit from double-sided UV LED digital inkjet printing capability. Like its name implies, double-sided printing allows the display of an advertisement or a message on both sides of media. The feature is necessary for certain applications, including double-sided pop-up, roll-up, or pole banners. It offers many benefits, including reduced waste and materials. Luckily, several wide format digital inkjet printers offer this as a standard or optional feature.
Basic Application
In its basic application, double-sided printing allows for viewing a sign on both sides. If it’s a banner or multi-layered window graphic, the final result allows the customer to display an advertisement and have it be viewed from the front and back, essentially doubling the exposure.
Time and Cost Efficiency
Double-sided UV LED digital inkjet printing capability cuts the time and ultimately the cost to produce this type of banner, thereby allowing the product to reach the market at both a lower turn time and minimized cost.
Value Addition
Double-sided UV LED digital inkjet printing adds value to customers and increases the range of applications a print service provider (PSP) can offer to their clients. System features, like high-resolution cameras in combination with quick response (QR) codes, help to ensure accurate alignment, which minimizes downtime and wasted material.
- An integrated camera system reads QR codes printed next to the subject; it uses them to correctly match front and reverse sides, ensuring that they line up.
- You can rotate and flip the roll, and the software will do the same with the subjects, so it always finds the correct position and orientation.
Environmental Benefits
Double-sided UV LED digital inkjet printing is also environmentally friendly, using less substrate while minimizing the cost of manufacturing and shipping.
Considerations and Challenges of Double-Sided UV LED Digital Inkjet Printing
When implementing double-sided UV LED digital inkjet printing on capable devices, print service providers (PSPs) should keep in mind certain considerations and challenges, including:
- Registration: Traditionally, the most challenging part of double-sided printing is registering the front and back sides of the print. However, as a camera system reads the QR codes automatically, there is no special operating skill required.
- Maintenance: As with any type of automation, it needs to be kept in tip-top running condition. Without this, it becomes very difficult to manage the registration, both front and back.
- Layering Challenges: Beyond the basic front-to-back registration, some applications that rely on clear substrates, like window graphics, can require as many as five layers (e.g., layers of color, white, black, white, color).
Users can overcome color accuracy and alignment challenges by using LED cold curing, which does not apply any heat. This allows for precise front-to-back lineup because the media is not distorted by the extreme heat of other technologies.
Substrate Considerations
Some substrates will present challenges in UV LED digital inkjet printing. Inconsistencies and quality control issues can be harmful. With JHF’s full closed-loop ink pressure system manufacturing systems approach, we manufacture, integrate, and optimize our engine, ink, media, workflow, and color management to ensure the highest quality, consistency, and reliability for our customers to help them eliminate as many production challenges as possible.
Open Opportunities for Double-Sided Printing
There are several occasions for Printer Service Providers (PSPs) to implement double-sided printing in the UV LED digital inkjet printing technology:
- Posters: Common opportunities for double-sided work in the wide format UV LED digital inkjet printing market, especially on heavier machine paper and styrene.
- Banners: Double-sided pop-up, roll-up, and pole banners.
- Specialty Applications: Some applications may require gluing, cutting marks, or labels.
These are common applications that you can find in any retail, restaurant, educational environment, and many other public spaces, including hospitals. Gas station pump toppers are another great application.
Additional Applications
Double-sided applications have been utilized for many years. The use of UV LED inks provides better contrast and density on backlit graphics.
Double-sided UV LED inkjet printing can be used to create day/night backlit prints on both paper and fabric without having to print white since the media works as the blockout layer.
JHF Double-Sided Printing Solutions
The JHF wide format UV LED digital inkjet printers offer double-sided printing capabilities. These printers are suited for a variety of rigid and flexible substrates, providing many options to create eye-catching, large format prints.
- JHF 3.2M V398 RTR UV LED Printer: This machine does not come with the CCD camera. Instead, it uses an LED light to read registration marks on the backside. The operation needs to mark the registration marks with a pen on the back side for the software to do the double-sided printing.
- Double-Sided UV Roll to Roll Printer: This printer does back-to-back printing using a CCD camera. The registration marks are printed at the right and left sides of the media to be read with the CCD camera and the optical sensor or automatic tracker control device to align the back side to the front side.
The double-sided UV LED printing technology developed by JHF uses a CCD camera with an automatic tracker controller to read the registration or crop marks for accurate double-sided printing.
Key Features
- Intelligent Equipment: The JHF double-sided UV LED printer is highly intelligent, effectively saving labor costs.
- Registration Pins: You can produce pinpoint registration with double-sided prints in no time, even with inaccurately cut media.
Registration Pins for Perfect Alignment
The JHF UV flatbed printer uses registration pins on the table to align the front and back images for double-sided printing.
- F3900 and F5900 Printers: These printers come with registration pins to ensure precise alignment of front and back images.
Conclusion
The JHF F3900 and F5900 UV LED digital inkjet flatbed printers are tailor-made for double-sided printing thanks to their vacuum system and registration pins that assure the media stays put. The use of these features makes double-sided printing for backlit displays, POP, or signage simple and precise.
