Experiences with different printheads for light curing inks.

[tofsCew]

Has anyone used or experimented with Ricoh, Xaar, or other non-HP printheads for light curing ink applications, and what were your findings compared to HP heads like the HP11?

[david]

HP printheads are normally thermal bubble based. It works by heating and vaporing some of the print liquid, hence generating the force to push the liquid out of the nozzle. Most other technologies (apart from Canon) use piezo to push or squeeze the print liquid one way or another.

So for UV ink, HP printhead is just out of the game, and for UK ink printing, you may even prefer stronger piezo printhead like Ricoh Gen4/5, Fuji, Xaar instead of film based like EPSON or some of the Ricoh printheads.

[Wonko]

Xaar, at least for the 128, works only with specific inks, and IIRC they are all oil based, so not UV hardening. The problem is that the piezo inside the header connected electrically by the ink. Running a Xaar 128 with water will shorten it and destroy it.

If there are any UV Inks that work with the Xaar 128, I would *love* to know. Also if there are any other heads that run UV and are relatively simple to control (like the Xaar 128)

[yeswanthnag]

I'm into sales and service of printers which uses these printheads. I have installed machines with printheads like Konica, Spectra, Seiko, Epson, XAAR, Toshiba(now RISO), Ricoh. Out of Konica 512i and 1024i 30pl are reliable in solvent based printing. For UV Toshiba, Epson and Ricoh are the best. I have these 3 kind of machines running in my office.