Here is an excellent and very revealing interview with Benny Landa, on his truly revolutionary new digital printing technology. The interview provides more detail on the new technology than anything else I have been able to find.<\/p>\n
This interview first appeared in the UK edition of the PrintWeek daily trade newsletter just before Drupa 2012 opened in Dusseldorf, Germany.<\/p>\n
“I’m more energised and excited than ever”: an interview with Benny Landa<\/em> Can Benny Landa do it again? He spearheaded the digital printing revolution in 1993 when he launched his Indigo E-Print 1000, promising “a print run of one”. Now, after selling Indigo to HP in 2001, he has sensationally returned to print with Landa Digital Printing and Nanography – a new method of printing that he believes will be the basis for a second digital revolution.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n On the eve of Drupa 2012, PrintWeek\u2019s Jo Francis asks Landa about his fresh ambitions to transform print by creating a new industry standard.<\/em><\/p>\n Benny, we spoke with you at Ipex 2010, where you received a Champions in Print award, and it felt very much as though you\u2019d stepped back from your involvement in print. Not in a million years would we have imagined seeing you with a brand new print technology at Drupa 2012. Welcome back \u2013 how does it feel?<\/em><\/strong> At the time you told us you were working on a new venture in nanotechnology in the field of energy. At what point did it become something that had a print application?<\/em><\/strong> Why are the nano pigments so special?<\/em><\/strong> How big are your nano particles?<\/em><\/strong> You say Nanography uses \u2018ink ejectors\u2019 rather than \u2018inkjet\u2019. What\u2019s the difference \u2013 how does Nanography work?<\/em><\/strong> So we eject the drops of ink on to the heated blanket, then we dry the ink image completely by driving the water out of the image with hot air. All you have left is the pigment and the polymer. It\u2019s an ultra-thin layer of polymeric film. Then, you just laminate that film on to the paper by pressing it on to the paper. It transfers with 100% efficiency.<\/em><\/p>\n You just press it? It doesn\u2019t need any heat or anything else to make it transfer?<\/em><\/strong> It sounds a bit like a temporary tattoo, or a decal. Is it something like that?<\/em><\/strong> What about the quality?<\/em><\/strong> What have been the main technical challenges in developing it? We\u2019ve seen some inkjet presses have problems with issues like ink drying and the requirement for pre-treated stocks. What was your eureka moment?<\/em><\/strong> What do you say to people who find nano- technology quite worrying, in that they fear the particles could go out of control or leach into the environment in unexpected ways?<\/em><\/strong> When you launched the Indigo in 1993 you had one model. You\u2019re coming to Drupa with six including B3, B2 and B1 sheetfed models and two web presses. That\u2019s very ambitious. Tell us about the thinking behind this portfolio of products.<\/em><\/strong> Are there other print-related areas where your nanotechnology could be relevant? What about other sizes, such as wide-format display printing?<\/em><\/strong> What\u2019s your sweet spot on run lengths?<\/em><\/strong> What about using Nanography for coatings and laminating?<\/em><\/strong> Could there be a stand-alone coating machine?<\/em><\/strong> Who have you partnered with on the press chassis?<\/em><\/strong> Who is it?<\/em><\/strong> Are you manufacturing the NanoInk yourself?<\/em><\/strong> What front-end software will be driving the presses? Or is it in-house?<\/em><\/strong> The entry-level configuration of each of these products doesn\u2019t have a fancy RIP. It behaves like a printing press. Instead of sending plates to the press you send a job.<\/em><\/p>\n But I could do variable information if I wanted to?<\/em><\/strong> How much server power is it going to take to drive one of these presses doing variable data at max speed?<\/em><\/strong> How do you plan to go to market?<\/em><\/strong> We\u2019ve had news of your first licensing deals with Komori and Manroland Sheetfed. Can we expect more?<\/em><\/strong> Are you already talking to other potential partners, or is that going to start at Drupa?<\/em><\/strong> When will the presses be commercially available?<\/em><\/strong> What do you need to work on between now and then?<\/em><\/strong> What sort of thing is a bug at the moment?<\/em><\/strong> You say Nanography has “unmatched” cost-per-page. Can you give us some details about the pricing model for the equipment, the ink, etc. Will there be a click charge?<\/em><\/strong> Do you think inkjet \u2013 in some form \u2013 will become the dominant digital print technology in general?<\/em><\/strong> Your new presses will be competing with some of the models made by your old company. Does that feel a bit strange?<\/em><\/strong> Benny, it\u2019s fair to say you are renowned for the energy and passion you bring to all your ventures. At Drupa you will be hosting the five daily theatre presentations on the Landa stand, which sounds like some feat \u2013 where do you get your energy from?<\/em><\/strong> Here is an excellent and very revealing interview with Benny Landa, on his truly revolutionary new digital printing technology. The interview provides more detail on the new technology than anything else I have been able to find. This interview first appeared in the UK edition of the PrintWeek daily trade newsletter just before Drupa 2012 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,3,4,5,6,36,7,9,10,44,16,11,12,13,14,41],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1777","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-book-printing","category-booklet-printing","category-calendar-printing","category-digital-printing-services","category-envrionment","category-flyer-printing","category-greeting-card-printing","category-letterhead-printing","category-personalisation","category-postcard-printing","category-poster-printing","category-presentation-folder-printing","category-printing-company","category-printing-services","category-rgb-to-cmyk","entry"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kainosprint.com.au\/kpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kainosprint.com.au\/kpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kainosprint.com.au\/kpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kainosprint.com.au\/kpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kainosprint.com.au\/kpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1777"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.kainosprint.com.au\/kpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1781,"href":"https:\/\/www.kainosprint.com.au\/kpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1777\/revisions\/1781"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kainosprint.com.au\/kpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1777"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kainosprint.com.au\/kpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1777"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kainosprint.com.au\/kpblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1777"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBy Jo Francis Wednesday, 02 May 2012<\/em><\/p>\n
\nFantastic! I\u2019m more energised and more excited than I\u2019ve ever been.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nYears ago, at Landa Labs, we needed to develop super small particles for our energy work. Nobody had a way of doing that so we had to develop our own method for producing these tiny nano particles. We had a breakthrough in making them, and I guess, because I\u2019ve spent my whole life in printing, the moment I saw it I thought “Hey, maybe this will work for pigments too”. That\u2019s when suddenly the bell went off and the light bulb lit, and we realised we had the answer for print.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nMany materials dramatically change their properties when you make them as nanomaterials \u2013 metals, for example, dramatically drop in their melting temperature. And all sorts of optical properties appear. Organic materials also change their properties and become much more efficient absorbers of light, so you need a lot less pigment if it\u2019s a nano pigment. And almost as important, nano pigments only absorb light, they don\u2019t scatter it, so you get pure colours.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nOur pigments are a few tens of nanometres in size. They are very small and have totally different properties from regular pigments. They are light absorbers on steroids. They really are amazing particles.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nBasically our process works like this: with inkjet you eject drops directly on to paper. We don\u2019t do that. We use very similar printheads, but they eject droplets on to a heated blanket conveyor belt. We have had to do some special modifications to the printheads to make them work well with our process, but they are very similar to inkjet heads.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThat\u2019s right, it\u2019s just using contact. So the image is on the surface of the substrate, but it\u2019s ultra thin. And because when it\u2019s transferred it\u2019s not a liquid, it\u2019s a plastic film, it sticks to the paper. The moment it touches the paper it\u2019s bonded to it and perfectly dry. All the moisture has been driven off before you touch the paper.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nYes, you could liken it to a decal. But because it\u2019s so very thin, it follows the contours of the paper, so it hardly changes the gloss levels, which is what you want. And it sticks tremendously whether it\u2019s paper or any plastic packaging film, including polyethylene. It\u2019s super simple, but the results are unbelievable.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThere is no printing process that produces these kinds of results. None. We talk about print qualities, not print quality because the combination of qualities is so fantastic. The dots have outstanding sharpness, gloss, uniformity and scratch resistance. I mentioned the unusual properties of nano materials and one of them is abrasion resistance. And because of the very high optical density of the pigments we can print high coverage without any issues.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nOne was the breakthrough in producing nano pigments. The second was the realisation that we could do this with aqueous inks, which are preferable both from an economic and from an environmental point of view. There\u2019s nothing like nature\u2019s own pure, clean solvent \u2013 water.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nNature is full of nanotechnology. We eat it every day, we drink it. The ones that are dangerous either float through the air or are poisonous and can penetrate the skin. Our inks are innocuous. We use food grade materials that are compatible for packaging.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nYou can do a lot when you take years to do it! We designed these different models to cover the key commercial segments.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nVery-wide-format is not immediately going to go to Nanography because our process requires the blanket. Every technology has its sweet spots and I think inkjet does a great job for outdoor signage and will continue to do that for a long time. Just like xerography has its place and a sweet spot. I think for mainstream commercial packaging and publishing \u2013 that\u2019s ours.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nIt depends how you define it, by A4 pages or B1 sheets. For B1 sheets it\u2019s in the thousands, which is a fantastic breakthrough in terms of crossover. We\u2019re talking about significant run lengths.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWe expect that some of our heads will be used for lacquers, special colours and protective coatings.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nMaybe.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nAll the web machines, from bottom to top are done in-house. The sheetfed machines, because of the crucial nature of grippers and sheetfeeding, we buy from a vendor.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nKomori. They did the engineering and manufacturing, to our design.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nYes, absolutely. And the blankets. We also ship the NanoInk as a concentrate and it\u2019s then diluted in the press using the customer\u2019s tap water. The machine deals with filtering and de-ionising it. This means a smaller carbon footprint and it reduces cost. The containers collapse to have almost no volume and almost no ink left in them, and you can dispose of them along with plastic beverage bottles. So, environmentally, the new technology is completely innocuous, it\u2019s recyclable \u2013 just a totally green product.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThere are two answers to that. The first answer is that we are working with leading front-end companies for front-end capability. We\u2019re not going to develop our own, we develop only those things that we have to develop that you can\u2019t buy elsewhere, and in this case you can buy it.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nYes of course. They are specified to be digital presses in all respects.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nFor most of the customers in this market I don\u2019t think that\u2019s where they initially want to go. It\u2019ll be an option they can add. For the most part, high-speed variable information isn\u2019t where the mainstream customers need to be initially.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWe believe Nanography will become an industry-wide standard. In my experience of this and other industries, no standard became universally accepted when it was offered as a monopoly by one company. Xerox invented xerography, and it was alone for 15 years until Canon, Ricoh and others came into the marketplace. We plan to offer Nanography to a broad range of partners.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nYes. You can expect others to be in the market with Nanographic products. We think the important thing is not the competition, the important thing is giving the customers the ability to succeed. And customers like a choice. We have the greatest technology in the world. For it really to become a standard \u2013 and to do so quickly \u2013 we need to open it up. The fact is, customers today are sitting on their hands. They\u2019re not buying offset presses. They see a decline in print, the emergence of digital media, so they think “I\u2019ll wait and see what happens”. We don\u2019t want them to wait too long, so in our view the best thing is for multiple vendors to offer Nanography. We think this can have a profound impact on the industry. <\/em>(Ed. During Drupa, Landa announced a partnership with Heidelberg.)<\/p>\n
\nWe\u2019re already talking to people who are very interested in pursuing this strategy. You might have thought that multiple press vendors wouldn\u2019t want to be in the market if they don\u2019t have sole rights to a product. That was the thinking years ago. That\u2019s not the problem today. Their customers would love to buy from them, but they aren\u2019t buying. And that\u2019s the problem everyone needs to solve: how do I get customers to buy? So I think we have a compelling value proposition and expect others will join us as partners. We plan for this to be embraced pretty broadly. Look at how many companies offer offset printing, or inkjet.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWe\u2019ll be placing presses in customers\u2019 premises some time in the latter part of 2013. At Drupa, we\u2019ll be taking letters of intent with deposits. We\u2019ve already been deluged by customers who want the first machines, and this is a way for customers to secure their place and we\u2019ll know who\u2019s really serious. We can\u2019t promise them a specific date, but we will give them preference.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nWe want to get rid of the bugs we have, and that\u2019s just a matter of time, say six-to-eight months. Secondly, production engineering and value engineering. And thirdly, testing. We want to put a lot of miles into these machines before we put them into customers\u2019 hands. I learned a few lessons at Indigo and I absolutely don\u2019t want machines in customers\u2019 hands until the customers are prepared and the machines are ready. All that takes time. But I\u2019m patient.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nDefects and flaws. But I\u2019m an expert at flaws! The end-product last time [Indigo] is now the industry standard for high quality output. Quality is something we understand. It\u2019s not an added feature, it\u2019s absolutely essential.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nIt will depend. In our case we will most likely offer equipment and clicks. Customers like to have a choice.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nFirst of all I think Nanography is different from inkjet. You really can\u2019t squirt water on to paper and expect it to be the solution for commercial print.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nThe market is so vast, and the playing field so huge, I don\u2019t think people will be wringing their hands saying “Oh, do I buy a Landa or do I buy an Indigo?” because we play in totally different parts of the space. Every technology has its sweet spot, and no digital technology has yet been able to enter the sweet spot we\u2019re talking about.<\/em><\/p>\n
\nYou\u2019re worried about me getting tired with five presentations a day? I jump out of bed every morning. I pinch myself. I have fantastic people around me, committed hard-working, passionate believers trying to do the impossible. And somehow the impossible becomes possible. It\u2019s really fantastic and very exciting. Last time, with Indigo, I wanted to do everything myself. This time, to do this in my lifetime, I want to see it become ubiquitous. I think that\u2019s the best thing for the industry and the best thing <\/em>
\nfor us.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"