Arms of Love

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It took some time, but automation is gradually creeping into wide-format printing, especially on the flatbed side. Many wide-format printers pride themselves on producing bespoke projects and specialty “one of a kind” applications. And, after all, haven’t us industry pundits and analysts—and vendors—been pushing this kind of approach?

However, as competition increases—it’s the rare print shop these days that doesn’t offer some kind of wide-format printing—and as pricing gets tougher, margins get smaller, and the labor situation gets tighter, wide-format shops are seeing the need to automate at least some parts of the business.

On the Soft Side

One key to automation in commercial printing is a templated approach to products like business cards, postcards and other items that have been easily “commoditized” so that users can go to an online storefront, pick a template, enter their custom content, OK a proof, and click “send.” Likewise, certain wide-format products like banners, rollups and posters, have reached a similar level of commoditization. We saw a lot of wide-format shops adopt this kind of approach for COVID materials during the pandemic. A storefront containing standard items then frees up design and production staff to focus on those bespoke applications that are often the pride and joy—and bread and butter—of the business.

Estimating is another area that is primed for automation, or at least an automated approach, rather than relying on the equivalent of “Karen in the back” to do all estimating by hand. Time was, wide-format estimating was an arcane process that required an almost Delphic oracle-like approach to figuring out how to price bespoke applications. But most if not all of today’s estimating software will handle wide-format estimating, be it commoditized, bespoke or somewhere in between.

There are other specialty areas of automation that have been available for a while. Some common wide-format-specific tasks include imposition, which unlike the use of the term in commercial or book printing, means something more along the lines of “job planning.” Think about retail display graphics for a chain store, where the same graphics and branding elements may vary slightly depending on the specific store dimensions. Imposition software can determine the order in which these retail graphics need to be printed based on which need to be shipped first.

Nesting is the process of orienting all the images to be printed such that you can fit as many as possible on a single board, or, in rollfed workflows, minimizing the amount of substrate that is used. Nesting optimization has traditionally been done manually, but advanced shape nesting—which any self-respecting DFE for wide-format printing will now offer—is an automated approach to what had been a laborious, manual process.

On the Hard Side

Wide-format printing—especially on the flatbed side—is starting to see greater and greater use of new kinds of hardware automation—including robots.

One unique approach was the subject of a white paper I wrote last year about Canon’s FLOW technology used in its Arizona 2300 Series of flatbed printers. You can download the white paper at https://bit.ly/3HSyxto. In a nutshell, it involves a zoneless vacuum system that applies suction only where it is required, while three-sided pneumatic registration pins allow edge-to-edge printing as well as the ability to align the substrate to either the left or right edge—or both edges—of the vacuum table. This means that media can be secured to the printer’s bed without the need for masking or taping. This leads to faster set-up times and quicker job changeover, as each board can be loaded in under a minute.

Naturally, your mileage will vary, but in one side-by-side face-off between the Arizona 2300 and “Brand X” featuring traditional taping-and-masking board loading, the job output on the Arizona was loaded and printed in 4:32 compared to the other machine that ultimately finished printing at 8:32. That’s time for almost a whole other job.

But perhaps the sexiest aspect of hardware automation is robotics, which are gradually coming to wide-format printing. Some high-end systems like the Inca Onset X series have long featured robotic arms for automated board loading and unloading. Units from Durst and Canon have also allowed integration of robotic systems. And on the finishing side, Zünd and Kongsberg cutting tables have featured robotic arms for loading and unloading.

In an EFI press event in September 2021, support for robotic integration on the Vutek XT and Nozomi systems was highlighted, and, likewise, in a Mimaki virtual press conference in October 2020, made much of the ability to integrate select Mimaki flatbed printers with third-party robotics.

“When people use the term 'robotics' today, they are still thinking about the classic arm,” said Sean Roberts, product manager at EFI. “There’s a ‘spider-based robotic’ that allows you to have different types of pickup capability. Then there are what they call 'cobots,' which are a little bit smaller scale.”

Adding robotics is ultimately a communication issue.

“You enable through an SDK [software developer kit] the communication technology," Roberts said, "and then an integration company will take that software code and plug the pieces together.”

That is, getting printer and robot to talk to each other. Basically, these are referred to as “hooks” which allow third-party robotics systems to be integrated so that the arm knows when the printer is ready to receive a blank sheet/board, and/or when an arm knows a board is ready to be offloaded.

Especially on flatbed printers, as print speeds increase, human-based loading and offloading can be bottlenecks, and fast-moving arms and other robotics can move much faster and accurately than humans, which at the high-productivity end of the market, is highly desired.

In 2016, Fujifilm initially launched the robotic handling system on the Inca Onset.

“We had introduced the Onset X series [in 2016], we had increases in speed, and we knew where the future was headed from a throughput demand standpoint and where the Onset sits in the marketplace,” said Becky McConnell, segment marketing manager, Wide Format Inkjet Fujifilm North America. “We haven't sold any non-robotic automation systems since it was introduced. So the demand certainly was there.” (UK-based Inca Digital’s Onset series is sold globally by Fujifilm.)

Automatic peripherals can be used for loading or offloading, or both, although, Roberts said offloading is a bit easier for robotics to handle.

“Robotics are really good at doing the same thing with a high degree of repeatability,” he said. “They typically don’t handle a lot of variability. On the delivery side of the press, when a sheet comes out, as long as that sheet is always in the same location, the robotic arm is really good about getting that signal to know the sheet is ready, picking it up, and putting it over on a pallet, putting it in the same place every time.”

The infeed side can be a little trickier.

“An operator brings in a pallet of material with a forklift or something, but is it always going be exactly in the same spot?" he said. "So the infeed side typically does require some level of ‘intelligence,’ or camera-based systems that can register where the unprinted sheet is, pick it up, and transport it onto the printer.”

Another issue—albeit not an insoluble one—that robotics can run into is mixed substrates. A lot of wide-format work isn’t long-run jobs on the same material. Sometimes a pallet of substrate for loading can contain a variety of substrates with different thicknesses or other properties that a conformity-loving may not be able to handle effectively. This can impact job changeover time, another big part of the productivity equation.

“That robotic system enables a media database,” said Roberts. “Within which you can spec the weight per sheet and sheet size. Based on that arm’s hardware, it’s going to automatically adjust. The intent is it becomes push-button simple for the operator. It says, ‘Here’s the media I just loaded.' Hit play on that run sequence, and the system will then wait for the printer to trigger its print signal and the number of copy counts.”

Inca Digital in developing the Onset X HS a few years ago, sought to improve not just speed, but also job changeover time. And improving the robotics was a big part of that.

“We saw that there was a lot of efficiency that could be gained if we could automate some features that the operator was manually doing,” said McConnell.

One of those is adjusting the ends of the robotic hands, or what are called “end effectors.”

“The effectors have suction cups going across them, and the bars that hold the suction cups are adjusted for the sheet size. With the HS model, that feature is automated.”

Other features, such as vacuum table adjustments, the type of vacuum hold-down needed, and a shutter system that covers up the unused portion of the bed can now all be automated.

“What was previously done manually now takes 30 seconds for it to be adjusted automatically based on the job,” McConnell said.

Inca Digital also developed software called Inca Connect.

“That plays a big role in how jobs can be automated as well.”

According to McConnell, robotics are about 20–30% of the cost of the printer, and adding robotic systems to other printing systems can be an expensive proposition. Then there are other considerations which, if you have ever seen a robotic arm swinging around at top speed, make perfect sense: the need for safety fencing.

Cobots have long had bump-stop sensors on them, meaning if someone or something bumps them, they stop immediately, although this is slowly coming to robotic arm systems. Still, you want to maintain a discrete distance from a fast-moving arm.

Ultimately, the choice of robotic feeding is going to be a function of a shop’s production volume. After all, you wouldn’t put robotics on a comparatively low- or mid-volume flatbed, right? Or would you?

“Even a device within our portfolio that doesn’t have that same level of high-speed throughput, does allow you the ability, especially with some of our mobile app tools, to really remote print and have the robot do the feeding while you can stay connected to the printer,” said Roberts. “If I were a business owner, I could see maybe if I put a skid in over there, I know that printer’s going to continue to run for the next shift and a half.”

And of course if labor continues to be scarce, print business owners may have little choice but to look to robots and cobots.

“I would imagine as this technology develops and as the robotics come down in price and the economies of scale work in their favor, we’ll probably see more of that kind of automation on the lower-end, mid-range units where it’s not as much of an investment as it probably is right now.”