At the 'Seiko Open Week 2022 event' people from all segments of the industry were represented. Juan Castells works with Itaca, one of the leading manufacturers of organic pigment. The pigments are used in both digital and analog inks and are quite interesting to learn and understand about the ink market - especially with a focus on tiles. Juan Castells also showcase examples of how other materials can be printed with the right mix of ink and printhead. The next venture is to digitally print vinyl and other products. Enjoy!

EFI and Seiko have been partners for years, and for industrial printing, EFI relied on the expertise of Seiko. At Seiko Open Week 2022, Carlos Carrtalá Sanchis and a few of his colleagues joined the Open Week 2022 event to learn, share, and find inspiration. Interesting always to see how collaboration is a given among large companies! GREAT!

The potential with Inkjet is amazing, and recently Seiko Instruments in Germany employed Fabio Tallarico, who has an engineering background in textile. With his background, he is supporting the growing interest in the textile industry in inkjet. Interesting!

Talking to Emilio Estrellas was a good experience. Projecta is an Italian manufacturer of tile/ceramic printers, and while we in the graphics arts industry just started the digital transformation today the tile market is 98% produced in digital. Interesting to learn, and also show that talking digital and inkjet is more of a replacement market rather than a transformation market. Interesting!

At the Seiko Open Week 2022, Christian Goebel built a test printer to show how Seiko printheads can be used to print in all directions - from the side, from the top, and even from the bottom - quite amazing. ideeGO has among other things build machines that print on all the sides of plastic boxes, to support a comprehensive logistics solution. Jetting from the distance is also one of the things the Seiko printheads are capable of, which you can see in the video jetting on uneven surfaces. Learn!

Ali Eranpurwala leads the printhead division of Seiko. In this interview, we get an idea of the potential with inkjet and Seiko, but also why Seiko Open Week is a recurring and important event. Enjoy!

Stefan Kessler from Lambda presents in this film their NIR - or Near Infra-Red curing solution that is the perfect solution for water-based curing. With the right frequency of the bulb, the drying process starts from the inside of the ink and gives the printer a number of advantages. If you are printing with UV, you know that it's photo-initiators that react to the UV-light, and though low-migration UV and a broader frequency perspective open up for UV to be used with food packaging, water-based has numerous advantages. This film is good to get wiser on!

Truly great to talk to Arne Ditscher from Cadis - who we met for the first time in our #LearnWithUs webinar about Inkjet last year. At Seiko Open Week 2022, Arne Ditscher showed how Cadis can help customers develop industrial inkjet solutions enabling print on numerous surfaces, even 3D surfaces, and more. One of the VERY interesting this is an Inkjet simulator Cadis is developing. Imagine a database with printheads, inks, and even substrates with all the properties you can imagine. Now the emulator can take an object and emulate what printheads and inks are best for this particular application. An amazing software, and as you can understand, software that can cut down development time, and cost!

Siegwerk also participates in the Seiko Open Week 2022 in Frankfurt, and one of the things he is showcasing is a new mat UV varnish they have developed for Inkjet. In the interview with Adrian Haas, we talk about how Siegwerk develops inks and varnishes for inkjet, currently only available for flexo. Great chat, and for sure to learn from!

If you wonder what DoDxAct stands for you are probably not the first to ask, and understanding what Mark Bale does - the name is ingenious! The abbreviation is short for Drop On Demand (e)Xact - and that is exactly what all this is about. As you know, or will learn in this film, the printheads are only one of the essential components of a functional printer. The controller, the ink, and obviously the substrate needs to be aligned to make a perfect output. Mark Bale focuses on the printhead, where he teaches, consults, and also has a lab where he can test all of the above. Enjoy the film!  

Almost 30 years ago Jigish Chiniwala started his business developing solutions for marking and coding. Today the company delivers solutions to more than 30 countries from marking and coding to complex security solutions. In the interview, Jigish Chiniwala explains the journey, and we also learn that security can't rely on only one technology. Enjoy!

Matthew Pullen works for Meteor Inkjet, and designs and produces the controller hard- and software enabling the print to hit the printheads in the right order, and fast enough! Matthew Pullen in particular works with the Meteor DropWatcher that compares the expected output with the actual output and enables through software to correct eventual errors on the go. Amazing what technology can do to maximize profitability. Enjoy!

At the Seiko Open Week 2022, George Boedler from Inkatronic develops unique inkjet printers for very different customers. Since Inkatronic delivers solutions to many different types of customers, they need to have a test device enabling testing of inks, printheads, substrates, etc., before building the actual machine, so Inkatronic developed their own. The test machine raised interest from other machine manufacturers and is today sold as a test device from Inkatronic. In the interview you will learn a lot from George Boedler, who with an engineering background knows what there is to know :-)

This is a really interesting, yet very difficult to understand, interview with Tri Tuladhar from Trijet. Many of the PSPs I talk to, often ask why the inkjet vendors don't allow to use of third-party inks, similar to how they buy offset inks. Is it only a money machine, or are there any other good reasons? There are! Tri Tuladhar is an ink specialist who tells us in this interview that each color and even each ink manufacturer has their own unique 'fingerprints.' These fingerprints are important for the vendors to know as the exact properties of an ink relates to how fast the machine can print, and when Tri Tuladhar shows how the same ink act under different conditions it makes a lot of sense. Dive in and enjoy!

Marc Granero is the Inkjet Sales Manager for Kao Chimigraf. The company is a chemical company, located in Spain, with an ink division. The inks they produce and show at Seiko Open Week 2022 are simply amazing. You will - we will not disclose right now - see inks with properties that can give you embellishment capabilities, or what about printed electronics using inkjet? All on your inkjet press, and well, Marc Granero gives you a lot of great information, so we are certain you will like this!

At the Seiko Open Week 2022, you get the opportunity to get kind of behind the scene. How do ink- and substrate manufacturers test their products? Even printhead manufacturers need test equipment, and that is exactly what Roberto Campos from People&Technology show in this interview. The company has two main products - one is the above-mentioned ink testers. The second product line is machines made to clean printheads when they start making stripes or have other artifacts. Interesting to see how this works, and a world, that many most likely don't know! Enjoy!

What is KURZ Label Weeks about? Well, it all started with the cancellation of LabelExpo, which KURZ considers a very important trade show. Stéphane Royère explains in this interview the idea behind Kurz Label Weeks - and what the expectations are. Interesting to learn how vendors turn a cancellation into an opportunity, and of course, interesting to see the result of Label Weeks which last almost four months!

Jordi Giralt has a background in digital printing with both HP and Heidelberg, so when he joined KURZ being responsible for the digital embellishment products he had a lot of knowledge to draw on. In this interview, we get an understanding of the journey that Giralt now leads, but also a closer look at two of the three technologies KURZ offers. Enjoy!

Markus Hoffmann is the Senior Vice President of Industrial and Applications, and a member of the board with Leonhard Kurz. In this interview, Markus Hoffmann talks about the broader perspective of competition, business models, future investments, and what drives him in his leadership position. Good to learn from!

In this interview, Dr. Markus von Beyer explains how KURZ addresses the sustainability agenda - as well as how KURZ work on lowering the company's carbon footprint as well as how they assist customers in achieving higher sustainability through the development of new products. Super interesting to hear how a lower carbon footprint can go hand in hand with packaging that sells!

Hinderer + Mühlich is a company in the KURZ group that specialized in the tools/dies/forms needed for hot foil stamping. With more than 150 employees the company operates in numerous countries - and from the samples shown at the Label Weeks at KURZ the company amazingly uses CNC and Laser to achieve great effects. In this interview, editor Morten B. Reitoft (again) talks with Michael Beschorner about the market, and the opportunities - hope you enjoy it!

KURZ is a chemical company but has since the '70s worked with the environment. In this film, we speak with Ralph Hopfensitz who works with the sustainability agenda within the KURZ group. The commitment to both customers, end customers, the society, and all stakeholders is very convincing and the commitment is to focus even further on the entire value chain. Interesting and, of course, important!

Amazing how cold foil with all its amazing capabilities is a real business opportunity for PSPs, and in this film, Marco Hanisch explains how the new thin foil gives PSPs further advantages. Enjoy the film!

Counterfeiting is a much larger issue than most would believe. In this film, Steffen Scheibenstock explains how KURZ and print can support brand owners. See solutions printed directly on the package to complex and extremely interesting options. With Scribos' solutions, it's possible to monitor how products are being checked globally in real-time. Amazing!

MPrint is a member of the Leonhard Kurz family specializing in the production of mainly inkjet devices. In this film Sales Director Achim Herzog walks us through how they develop technology to be integrated with various types of equipment as well as being integrated with sister companies' hardware. In this film, you'll get a great insight into how MPrint thinks and what they offer. Interesting!