High-pressure system case study
Commercial display graphics
DriSteem helps improve print consistency for a national leader in commercial display graphics
RESULTS
" Lowered the reject rate for large-format digital press output from 14 percent to 2.5 percent
" Lowered the customer's electricity consumption enough to qualify for a significant utility rebate
THE JOB
Modernistic is one of the nation's leading suppliers of commercial display graphics and industrial OEM products. The company, headquartered in
One of the 165 atomizing nozzles in
Stillwater, MN, was founded in 1938 as a specialty die cutter. Modernistic over a quarter mile of tubing throughout later added commercial screen printing, and finally, acknowledging numerous
Modernistic's 160,000-square-foot facility.
breakthroughs in digital press technology, acquired their first major digital printing press in 2004. While demand for screen printing remains high, digital press technology allows Modernistic to adapt to their customers' changing needs most notably speed, quality, and the variety of surfaces onto which their display graphics are printed.
In the early days of digital presses, customers willingly sacrificed image quality for quick turn-around times and lower costs. However, by 2013, ink and nozzle breakthroughs and improved media had advanced digital printing to a level where the image quality contended with screen printing.
In 2014, Modernistic acquired a digital press capable of image resolution as high as 1200 x 1200 dots per inch and fast enough to print 61 ten-foot by five-foot sheets per hour. The keys to such ultra-high resolution and speed are ink droplet size and the number of nozzles. Each of the droplets dispensed from the printer's 42,000 nozzles has a volume of nine picoliters, which is nine trillionths of a liter. The diameter of each droplet is 5.55 microns, or
1/180th of a millimeter.
We needed a system ...
... that could humidify at a high enough volume and precisely enough for the digital press room. That's where it had to work.
THE CHALLENGE
How small is nine picoliters?
If a liter of ink is spread out so each nine-picoliter droplet occupies one square millimeter,
the area covered will completely
