“The ink means that the codes will adhere to bottles without smudging even in particularly wet and humid environments,” a company spokesman told FoodProductionDaily.com. The Linx 4900BC comprises a Continuous Ink Jet printer with the company’s purpose-designed sticky ink for permanent coding.
An air knife drying system is said to ensure continuous reliable operation at high speeds. The printhead and air knife ensure that the print area on the bottle is dried immediately before to printing, ensuring that printing always occurs on the dried area for consistent code quality, even between production changeovers and daily line adjustments.
Bottling applications
The permanence of the codes is assured by the company’s Linx Black versatile beverage ink 1058, whose superior adherence is said to be ideal for bottling applications. Designed for glass, PET and PLA applications, the ink penetrates condensation to provide good print quality and excellent permanence right up to the point of its removal in caustic bottle washers, according to the company.
The Linx 4900BC coder incorporates the features of the company’s existing Linx 4900, offering 2-line printing of text and logos at production line speeds of up to 6.25m/s.
The self-cleaning print head and automatic power offer easy maintenance and trouble-free starts and stops, says the company.
“Bottling is a highly competitive industry, so manufacturers need to get the most out of their equipment, in terms of speed and performance,” said Dr Nick Scott, Linx product manager. “Any downtime reduces competitiveness, so the unique features of the Linx 4900BC have been developed to keep things moving.
“As a result, this total bottle coding solution ensures that bottles are coded using inks that stick, printed exactly where you want and delivered by the most reliable ink jet printer for challenging environments,” he added.