22 May The Future of Printing? Landa Nanography launch at Drupa.

The Future of Printing? Landa Nanography launch at Drupa.

A few Webmarteers attended Drupa Print Expo this year in Dusseldorf. The standout event that everyone came back talking about was the launch by Benny Landa of his new Nanographic printing presses.

Nanography is the term coined for a new process which aims to plug the gap between digital print and lithographic print, making medium sized runs more economic for customers and printers. It uses similar print heads to ink jet but key differences are that the size of the drops of ink are smaller in nanography and the ink is printed onto a printing blanket rather than directly onto paper. The ink is dried on the blanket so it forms a polymer layer (think plastic) which then sticks to the paper on contact, effectively laminating the image to the surface of the paper.

Nanography uses special water-based inks but can print onto standard cut sheets or webs of paper – as well as onto PVC or packaging film. It’s being touted as using less energy and less ink than current processes too. Indeed the whole proposition does sound well thought out and the unveiling presentation was very slick and convincing (guess it should be at a cost of £20m!)

We took a video of the launch presentation, so check it out below.

Landa expects its first presses to be delivered to printers towards the end of 2013. Looking at the quality of the test runs they produced at Drupa, we reckon they’re going to need that time to get the print quality up. However, printers seemed to be queuing up to put down deposits so it’s looking like nanography is going to be a feature of the print landscape in the not too distant future.