New technology at The Inkjet Conference 2018

“The continued growth of inkjet across all areas is driven by fast-changing technical innovation. We see one technology rapidly replaced by another. Each element of inkjet has the ability to be the key disruptive component that changes the future business opportunities and potential of our industries. Software and vision systems are sometimes seen as the peripheral elements of inkjet systems and yet can be potentially as disruptive as new ink chemistry or new printheads. TheIJC offers the only opportunity to meet experts from every inkjet field,” said Steve Knight from Digital Direct Technologies, co-founder of the event.

The history of TheIJC reaches back to 2014 when for the first time ESMA (European Specialist Printing Manufacturers Association) and Digital Direct Technologies opened a unique venue for OEMs, suppliers, researchers, innovators, brand owners and all those affected by the digital shift in various manufacturing processes. Since then, TheIJC has been growing with an average rate of 25%, reaching 525 attendees during the last European edition in 2017. An ongoing support from Drupa as the enabling partner, MS Italy as sponsor and Specialist Printing Worldwide as the official journal are among the key success factors.

TheIJC 2018 will start in the afternoon of 15 October 2018 with a series of inkjet workshops available for free to all registered conference delegates. One can choose between ‘Introduction to inkjet’, ‘Spyglass on the digital factory’, ‘Inkjet in packaging’, ‘Titanium dioxide: The classification journey’ and ‘Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe: What’s in it for me?’. All workshops are chaired by industry experts who engage in discussion with the participants

Following the success from the previous edition, both conference days will open with plenary sessions dedicated to the key advances in printhead architecture. John Corrall from Industrial Inkjet will announce a new Konica Minolta product family. Speakers from Archipelago, Fujifilm Dimatix, Kodak, Kyocera, Ricoh and Xaar will talk about their latest breakthroughs and explain mechanisms behind core inkjet technology.

With an extraordinary amount of high-level technical content, the organisers structured further presentations on three parallel tracks. Hardware components, system integration, software and vision inspection are discussed on Track One which includes innovative instruments for measurement and analysis of jetting reliability by Polytype but also Smithers Pira’s market forecasts or ‘Freedom To Operate’ analysis by Extract Information.