Industrial inkjet did the heavy lifting this week. Fujifilm put a 400 dpi single-pass printbar into the construction-materials market and, separately, signed a global packaging partnership with ePac built on its water-based J Press FP790. HEIDELBERG named its first North American Jetfire 50 customer. Drytac launched a double-sided printable film that lets one piece of media carry two jobs. On the business side, Distribution Management bought National / AZON, consolidating a big slice of the US wide-format reseller channel — and SAKATA INX took inkjet somewhere it has never been reliable before: the electron transport layer of a perovskite solar cell. For print shops, the thread running through all of it is the same: faster single-pass arrays, more aggressive fluids, and more substrates per machine all land on the printhead first.
Fujifilm launches the HX1024 Printbar System for construction materials
Fujifilm introduced the FUJIFILM HX1024 Printbar System, a single-pass industrial inkjet unit offered in 30-inch and 40-inch print widths. It runs at 400 dpi and up to 500 ft/min (roughly 152 m/min) using LED-curable UV inks, and it is available now.
The target market is not graphics at all — Fujifilm is aiming at weather barrier wrap, abrasive paper, wallboard and decorative laminates. It is another sign that the growth in inkjet is happening on factory lines decorating building products, not only in print shops.
Single-pass at 500 ft/min means every nozzle fires continuously, in register, with no second chance to cover a dropout. There is no bidirectional pass to hide a weak jet — one blocked nozzle becomes a visible stripe down the whole roll. That is why single-pass arrays live or die on nozzle-level redundancy, stable ink temperature and a maintenance routine that purges before a run rather than after a complaint. Shops moving from scanning carriage machines to printbar architecture should budget for nozzle-check discipline, not just faster throughput.
Fujifilm and ePac sign a global partnership around the water-based J Press FP790
Announced at PACK EXPO, Fujifilm and ePac Flexible Packaging entered a global strategic partnership, starting with a J Press FP790 installation at ePac's new Phoenix, Arizona facility and planned fleet expansion across ePac's global network thereafter.
The FP790 is a water-based digital inkjet press for flexible packaging, printing at 1200 x 1200 dpi, covering more than 90% of the Pantone gamut and using food-safe water-based inks on recyclable structures. ePac's stated reason for the deal is run-length: it wants to take on larger orders without giving up short-run, on-demand work.
Water-based ink on film is one of the harder jobs you can give a printhead. Aqueous fluids dry at the nozzle plate far faster than solvent or UV, so idle time is the enemy — capping, humidity control and circulation matter more than raw firing frequency. If you run any water-based head, from a desktop DTF unit to a packaging press, the same rule applies: keep the fluid moving, keep the cap wet, and never let a machine sit uncapped overnight.
HEIDELBERG names CJ Graphics as North America's first Jetfire 50 customer
HEIDELBERG confirmed that CJ Graphics — one of North America's larger commercial printers — will install the first Jetfire 50 industrial inkjet press on the continent, at its production site in Mississauga, Ontario. The announcement followed demonstrations at HEIDELBERG's new Print Media Center Americas in Marietta, Georgia.
Owner Jay Mandarino cited print quality and cost-effectiveness as the deciding factors, while HEIDELBERG framed the win as further expansion of its position in industrial digital printing. It is a notable datapoint for anyone weighing a litho-to-inkjet transition in sheetfed commercial work.
Every litho-to-inkjet switch moves a shop's consumable risk from plates to printheads. Plates are cheap and disposable; a head array is a capital asset that degrades with use and neglect. Shops making this jump should get clear early on head life expectations, whether individual heads can be swapped without recalibrating the whole bar, and what the lead time on a replacement actually is — because on a single press line, a head on backorder is a press that is not earning.
Drytac launches PrintDuo, a double-sided printable film for window graphics
Drytac announced the global launch of PrintDuo, a 10 mil (250 µ) adhesive-free synthetic film with a white matte printable surface on both sides and a polyester core giving 99.9% opacity — so two different messages can be printed back-to-back with no show-through.
It carries no built-in adhesive and is installed with Drytac's SpotOn Duo, WindowTac or ReTac Duo mounting products. Drytac lists compatibility with eco-solvent, latex/resin and UV printing, aimed at push-pull window graphics, retail promotions, directional signage and branded displays.
A media that prints on three different ink chemistries is convenient for the shop and demanding on the head. Synthetic films are non-absorbent, so ink sits on the surface and any aerosol or misting finds its way back to the nozzle plate — the classic cause of satellite drops and sudden banding on film jobs you never saw on paper. Keep platen height correct for the 10 mil caliper, wipe the head face more often than you would on vinyl, and watch for static pulling mist onto the carriage.
Distribution Management acquires National / AZON
Distribution Management (DM), the St. Charles, Missouri wholesale distributor of print and imaging products founded in 1972, acquired National / AZON of Troy, Michigan. Terms were not disclosed.
AZON distributes hardware and software into reprographics, graphic arts and sign-making — wide-format printing, large-format scanning, finishing, engraving, routing and signage — through a nationwide reseller network. CEO Sean Fleming framed the deal as combining AZON's technical expertise and manufacturer relationships with DM's national distribution infrastructure, so resellers can source more technologies from one place.
Channel consolidation is quietly a parts-availability story. When distributors merge, catalogs get rationalised and slower-moving spares — including heads for machines that are five or ten years into their life — are often the first lines cut. If you run older equipment, this is a good moment to confirm you have a second, independent source for your printheads and consumables rather than discovering a discontinued part number mid-job.
SAKATA INX and Sofab Inks develop an inkjet-printable ETL ink for perovskite solar cells
SAKATA INX and Sofab Inks announced a collaboration on an inkjet-printable ink for the electron transport layer (ETL) of perovskite solar cells. Sofab contributes its tin-oxide (SnO2) ETL materials; SAKATA INX brings nano-dispersion and ink formulation know-how from its industrial inkjet business. The ink was shown at Perovskite Connect in Berlin on 21–22 October.
The companies say the formulation is being designed to limit damage to the underlying perovskite layer, with inkjet deposition offering more precise placement and less material waste than competing methods, for both single-junction and tandem cells.
Functional fluids are where printheads get stress-tested. Nano-dispersed metal-oxide inks are abrasive and prone to settling, and the layers they build are measured in nanometres — so jetting stability, not colour, is the whole specification. The engineering that comes out of this work (better recirculation, finer filtration, tighter drop-volume consistency) tends to show up in graphics heads a generation later. It is also a reminder of why filters and ink-line maintenance are not optional on any pigmented ink.
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.
Sources: WhatTheyThink, Large Format Review, Drytac, HEIDELBERG, Fujifilm Newsroom, The Cannata Report, Perovskite-Info.
