Upgrading to Xaar 1003C printhead delivers quality, reliability and efficiency savings in tile decoration

Cambridge – The Xaar 1003C printhead is redefining the benchmark for industrial inkjet printing with its reliability, quality and full backwards compatibility delivering uptime savings and efficiencies to users of up to 20%.

Launched early last year and first exhibited at drupa 2016, the Xaar 1003C features a number of improvements on previous models, including the XaarGuard™, which provides the ultimate in nozzle plate protection and helps the Xaar 1003C achieve the longest maintenance-free production runs in the printing industry.

Since its launch, the Xaar 1003C printhead has been adopted by many ceramic tile manufacturers around the world – and has rapidly become integral to their tile production processes. Among these is Parefeuille Provence: in order to create high-quality granite and concrete tile designs, the French company installed an EVOSEVEN digital printer from Projecta Engineering equipped with five print bars populated with Xaar 1003 GS12C printheads – and has been delighted with the results.

“The big evolution we see with the Xaar 1003C is the significant reduction in maintenance and production downtime,” comments Production Manager Laurent Jacquemin. “We have seen a 3 times improvement in the cleaning cycle compared  with the Xaar 1002C, and when we do stop for maintenance, the cleaning process is fully automatic and only takes one minute.”

“All of this results in significantly more production uptime and consequential efficiencies and savings and due to the success of this installation we have decided to install a second digital printer this year to upgrade one of the remaining non-digital lines.”

Similarly, Oscar Ceramics in Italy adopted the Xaar 1003C printhead for digital ceramic tile decoration in 2016 – and the printhead has since played an important role in the company’s efficiency drive by helping to dramatically improve production uptime and throughput, while also delivering exceptional print quality onto the tiles.

“With this new printhead I have dramatically decreased machine downtime, as printhead maintenance is required only once or twice in every 24 hours,” explains Andrea Porta, Chief Designer at Oscar Ceramics. “This means I can increase production significantly. We have hundreds of designs, hundreds of products, hundreds of images in production. All my pictures, all my designs, all my work is safe with the Xaar 1003C”.

The Xaar 1003C printhead boasts Xaar’s Tuned Actuator Manufacturing. This ensures full scalability with a simple and quick set up, streamlining printhead replacement, and achieves consistent print quality across long print bars with multiple printheads, at different greyscale levels. 

Like its predecessors in the range, the Xaar 1003C combines Xaar’s unique and patented TF Technology^® with its Hybrid Side Shooter^® architecture so that ink is recirculated – at the highest flow rates in the industry – directly past the back of the nozzle during drop ejection. This ensures that the printhead operates reliably even in the harshest industrial environments

The Xaar 1003 GS12C printheads have also greatly enhanced the print uniformity of the digital printers at Century in Italy, situated in the world-famous ceramic tile manufacturing region in Modena. Century adopted the Xaar 1003 printhead to bolster its reputation for producing extremely high quality floor tiles using state-of-the-art technology.

"Previously, print uniformity had been difficult to achieve, but with the changeover to the Xaar 1003 GS12C printheads, we can see that it has significantly improved,” comments Factory Director Alberto Corradini. His colleague, Glazing Line Manager Emanuele Farrarini, adds, “Now with the Xaar 1003C we can achieve uniform print quality without requiring any fine tuning. This has led to an increase in production output of around 15-20%."

In response to market demand, the Xaar 1003C is available in three variants; the Xaar 1003 GS6C for fine detail, ideal for wall tiles, the Xaar 1003 GS12C balances detail and laydown to cover a wide range of ceramic tiles, and is ideal for floor tiles. The Xaar 1003 GS40C jets the highest laydown for special effects.

All variants are designed to be fully backward compatible, allowing customers to easily upgrade and enjoy the benefits that this new printhead brings.

“We have been delighted with the response we have had to the new Xaar 1003C printhead family since it was launched last year, and the feedback we have had from customers has been great,” says Gerard Winn, Senior Product Manager at Xaar. “The range is testament to our commitment to ensuring that our customers remain at the leading edge of digital tile decoration. The Xaar 1003C guarantees that they will.” Anyone wishing to enjoy the benefits of an upgrade should visit www.xaar.com/upgrade.