LIENZ, Austria – Durst’s Inkjet Innovations Days provided both information and inspiration for more than 120 of Europe’s leading commercial imagers and trade journalists who gathered last week at Durst’s research and manufacturing complex here for the two-day event – which featured lectures, technology demonstrations and a glimpse of things to come.

“We were delighted by the response we received for the event,” said Michael Lackner, Durst’s Worldwide Director of Marketing.  “We were fully subscribed with guests and the response to the program met with universal approval.  Although Inkjet Innovations Days was intended as a one-off event, I believe it is something that could become an annual part of the Durst calendar.”

The event included a series of informative and entertaining lectures by some of the industry’s leading authorities on digital and inkjet printing. The speakers covered such subjects as “The Future of Large Format Inkjet,” “Web-to-Print” and “New Business Models.”  Dr. Markus Lorenz, Partner and Managing Director of The Boston Consulting Group, Munich; Matteo Rigamonti, President of the Italian Web-to-Print pioneer Pixartprinting; and Bernd Payer of PKF Consulting GmbH, who led his own successful printing company in Austria for 15 years before becoming a consultant; all stood at the podium to address the audience.

Berthold Oberhollenzer of Germany’s Fogra examined the emerging operating quality-control system known as Process Standard Digital (PSD) in a presentation titled “Printing the Expected with PSD.” Unlike offset printing, Oberhollenzer noted, digital printing has too many media variables to copy the existing ISO Printing Standard. Fogra has based PSD on actual quality of print. The end result is a quality standard that can be followed by printers and easily checked to see where any fault might lie.

Inkjet Innovations Days also provided an opportunity for guests to see demonstrations of Durst’s latest technological achievements and printing platforms.  They include the new Rho 1012 and Rho 1030 Continuous Inkjet Production Systems, as well as Durst’s remarkable Variodrop printing technology, a significant breakthrough in regulating the accuracy of ink droplet size and placement, which has very important implications for grayscale printing.

Durst has dramatically raised the expectations of production-level digital printing with the introduction of its new Rho 1012 and Rho 1030 printers.  The Rho 1012 – equipped with Durst’s new high-performance 12-picoliter Quadro Array print head technology – brings exceptional image quality to the production printing environment.  The Rho 1030 – complemented by fully automated media handling / operating configurations – delivers unprecedented print speeds of up to 10,000 s.f./hr.

Variodrop technology strictly controls drop size modulation by utilizing “multipulsing.”  This technological breakthrough delivers two voltage pulses, with the second pulse pumping precise amounts of ink into the droplet before it detaches from the nozzle plate – without forming any satellites.  Variodrop technology is now available on all of Durst’s P10 Series printers.

“Compared to the often uneven droplets formed from a not-well-tuned greyscale wave form, this double-pulse drop shape with Variodrop is perfectly uniform and the placement is always evenly spaced,” said Dr. Richard Piock, CEO of Durst Phototechnik Digital Technology GmbH.

Among future projects currently in the works at Durst that were presented to attendees was a development on the ink front:  a new Premium White HD Set for printing on the Rho P10 Series. This new white ink provides even better coverage even at high print speeds, the audience was told.