Industry News
Roland DG had the loudest week of anyone, launching a 64-inch latex printer with cutting built in and, two days earlier, a whole industrial direct-to-object range. Xerox moved on the production side, entering a strategic partnership to put Flint Group Digital Xeikon presses under its own badge. Domino set an entry-level label press down in North America for the first time, Anker showed a DTG/DTF hybrid aimed at the bottom of the garment market, and the PRINTING United stand announcements started landing in volume ahead of the September 23–25 show in Las Vegas. Below is what moved between August 31 and September 6, 2026 — and, as always, what each item means for the head in your machine.
Wide Format & Signage · September 3
Roland DG launches the TrueVis AG-640 — a 64-inch latex printer with cutting built in
Roland DG introduced the TrueVis AG-640, which the company describes as the first 64-inch latex printer with integrated cutting. It runs newly developed TA-2 water-based latex inks through Roland's latest piezo printheads, with CMYK plus Orange and Red for an expanded gamut, a high-density white, and a separate optimizer channel for ink placement and durability. Roland is pitching instant-dry latex — no outgassing, so prints go straight to lamination and finishing — alongside VersaWorks 7 and intelligent media handling. Executive Officer Ryugo Nimura framed the target plainly: "consistent color, lower operating costs, broader application capability."
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Count the channels: CMYK, orange, red, white and optimizer is eight fluids sharing one carriage, and two of them — white and optimizer — are the ones that settle, skin and clog. An expanded gamut is genuinely useful for spot-colour matching without spot inks, but it also means more nozzles to keep alive on jobs that only ever use four of them. If you buy into a six-, seven- or eight-channel machine, run the whole ink set on a schedule rather than letting the specialty channels sit idle for weeks between the jobs that need them.
Industrial UV · September 1
Roland DG expands direct-to-object with the VersaObject IO-300 flatbed and RC-300 cylindrical series
Two days before the latex launch, Roland DG announced its industrial direct-to-object push: the VersaObject IO-300, a UV flatbed with a 30" × 20" print area running up to 37.6 sq ft/hr in CMYK, and the RC-300 and RC-300c, helical UV printers for cylindrical objects that Roland says will decorate a 20-ounce tumbler in about 60 seconds. Both lines use the company's award-winning EUV-H hard ink in CMYK, White, Primer and Gloss configurations. The IO-300 targets industrial parts, control panels, nameplates and cosmetic packaging on polycarbonate, ABS, acrylic, PVC, glass, aluminium and stainless; the RC-300 goes after drinkware, bottles, cans and promotional products. Both are available now through Roland DG authorised partners.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Direct-to-object is the hardest environment a head lives in. On a flatbed the substrate is rigid and unforgiving, so head height is set for the tallest point of the part — misjudge it, or let a part shift in the jig, and you get a strike rather than a banding artefact. On a cylindrical machine the head is jetting onto a moving curved surface with primer and gloss in the mix, both of which are stickier and more prone to nozzle-plate build-up than CMYK. Whatever the platform, the two habits that pay for themselves are measuring part height rather than eyeballing it, and wiping the nozzle plate on the schedule the manual gives you, not the one your throughput would prefer.
Ricoh GEN5 UV/Solvent (MH5420) — the recirculating head class that carries most industrial UV flatbed and direct-to-object work.
Labels & Packaging · September 4
Domino brings the N410 LED inkjet label press to North America
Domino confirmed the North American trade-show debut of the N410 digital LED inkjet label press at PRINTING United Expo, September 23–25 in Las Vegas, booth C2673. It is deliberately an entry point: 600 dpi, a 13-inch web, up to 164 ft/min (50 m/min), and a five-colour CMYK+White configuration, in a compact 7.2 ft × 6.5 ft × 13.7 ft footprint with integrated control cabinets and what Domino calls quick installation and setup. The company is offering it through an in-house leasing programme starting at $6,995 per month with service and support bundled in.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: The interesting number in that spec sheet is not the speed, it is the white channel on an entry-level press. White is where first-time digital label buyers get their education: it is the heaviest-pigment ink in the machine, it settles fastest, and on a press bought to run short jobs between long idle stretches it is the channel most likely to be the reason the press is down. Whatever LED inkjet label press you are looking at, ask two questions before you sign — what the recirculation arrangement is on the white channel, and what a replacement head actually costs — because the monthly lease number is not the whole cost of running it.
Business · September 1
Xerox partners with Flint Group Digital Xeikon to expand its production print portfolio
Xerox announced a strategic partnership with Flint Group Digital Xeikon that will see Xeikon digital press technology rebranded and sold under the Xerox name, paired with Xerox workflow software, finishing, distribution and support. The stated targets are digital packaging, labels and commercial print, sitting alongside Xerox's existing Iridesse, Proficio PX500/PX300, IJP900 and PrimeLink lines. The first Xerox-branded press is expected in the coming months, with model-level detail to follow. Terry Antinora of Xerox called it "an important milestone in the evolution of the Xerox production print business"; Walter Benz of Flint Group Digital Xeikon said partnering with Xerox "validates the quality of our solutions and expands global reach."
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Badge-engineering deals like this change who you call, not what is inside the machine. That matters for parts: when a press is sold under one name and built by another, the consumable and spare-part chain can end up running through a channel that did not exist when the press was quoted, and lead times on heads and imaging components are the first place that shows. If you buy into a rebranded platform, get the underlying manufacturer's part numbers in writing at purchase — they are what you will be searching for at 2am three years from now, not the badge on the front.
Textile & Garment · September 4
Anker shows a DTG/DTF hybrid fabric printer at IFA — and claims to solve white-ink clogging in software
At IFA Berlin, Anker showed a prototype fabric printer that combines DTG and DTF in one machine, handling light and dark fabrics, gold and silver foil overlays, and full-colour fills over single-colour embroidery. The claim worth noting is the maintenance one: Anker says an "intelligent cleaning algorithm" reduces white-ink clogging without the ink-circulation hardware professional machines use. No name, no price, and no independent verification yet — commercial launch is slated for Q1 2027. The company also pushed an over-the-air update to its eufyMake E1 UV printer adding bidirectional printing (roughly double the speed, no hardware change), with a roll-to-film attachment due late September 2026 and a high-capacity CISS in Q4.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Treat "software solves white ink" as a claim to be tested, not a spec. Ink circulation exists because titanium dioxide pigment is dense and settles under gravity in the head and the lines — a smarter cleaning cycle can shorten the interval before a clog forms, but it cannot stop the pigment settling. On any DTG or DTF machine without circulation, the real controls are the boring ones: agitate or shake the white daily, run the machine or its cycle rather than letting it sit, and keep the capping station clean and sealing properly. That last one is the single most common reason a white channel dies on a low-cost garment printer.
Epson I3200-A1 water-based head — the workhorse behind most of today's DTG and DTF machines, and the part that white ink tends to claim first.
Production Inkjet · September 1
SCREEN Americas takes the Truepress JET 560HDX to PRINTING United
SCREEN Americas confirmed it will showcase the Truepress JET 560HDX high-speed roll-fed inkjet press at PRINTING United Expo, booth N6143, September 23–25. The press handles coated and uncoated stock up to 560 mm wide and is aimed at commercial, direct mail and publishing printers running high-volume variable work at what SCREEN positions as offset-comparable colour. Samples from the wider Truepress JET, Truepress LABEL and Truepress PAC ranges will be on the stand alongside it.
PRINTHEAD ANGLE: Roll-fed production inkjet is where head economics get serious. A full-width array is a stationary bank of heads with no scanning carriage to average out variation, which means a single weak nozzle prints a stripe down the length of every job until it is corrected — and it is why nozzle-out compensation, not raw resolution, is the feature that decides uptime on these machines. If you run or are quoting one, understand how the press detects a failed nozzle and how it compensates, and get the per-head replacement cost multiplied by the number of heads in the array. That figure, not the dpi, is the one that governs your cost per thousand.
Kyocera KJ4B-QA — a water-based head of the type that populates the full-width arrays in high-speed production and textile inkjet.
Whatever equipment you run — or are thinking about running next — the printhead is the heart of it. If you ever need a replacement head or a hard-to-find component, browse our full range of printheads and printer spare parts and accessories — our team is always happy to help you find the right fit for your machine.
See you next week with more industry news.
— The Allprintheads Team
Sources: WhatTheyThink and Wide-format Impressions (August 31 – September 4, 2026); Roland DG / PR Newswire; Xerox Newsroom; Flexographic Technical Association; SCREEN GP Americas; Tech Times (IFA 2026).
