Ceramics

The ceramic tile industry is very dynamic, driven by consumer trends and retailer demands and, as such, is changing rapidly. Globalisation and maturing of the existing analogue print technology has created a global market limiting the differentiation primarily to price and design. With core technology not being available to digitise the tile decoration market until now, many attempts failed due to the actual limitations of the digital technology. Now however, there are various printers available that answer the ceramic industry’s need for an industrial inkjet printer that can handle a variety of fluids with ease, to print short run volumes of bespoke tiles, cost-effectively. This is also extending the advantages that ceramic tiles can offer over competing cladding materials, such as stone, glass or metal.

White Paper

The Xaar Guide to Digital Printing in the Ceramics Sector
Date Published: 6th August 09

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Main Market Drivers

• Shorter life cycle of products
• Desire for greater product differentiation
• More frequent design changes
• Customisation
• Wider range of tile types, including textured tiles
• Shorter print runs
• Cost reduction
• Supply chain restructuring
• Quality

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The Benefits of Digital Print

• Tile edge decoration
• Low relief decoration
• Higher graphic variability
• Fewer printing consumables needed (such as rollers etc)
• Shorter print times, no set-up time
• Cost-effective short production runs
• High-quality greyscale images

The economic viability of small batch production and the cost & time involved in ceramic tile printing will be reduced by the adoption of digital print techniques. It could end up being as viable to print one tile as well as one hundred thousand, thus enabling sample tiles to be provided to the distribution network and printed in very small batches as they are ordered by the consumer, cutting down on storage, stock, distribution costs and wastage. In addition, ceramic tile printers have overcome the issue of quality through the use of low density inks. The limitations with this method is that either large drop binary can look good in shadow detail (if high density inks are used) or great in highlight areas if low density inks are used. Using Xaar Variable Drop Technology (greyscale) printheads can achieve great print quality in both highlight and shadow areas, providing the right ink is used.

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Xaar printheads developed for the Ceramics market

Xaar 1001