The decision in favour of the inkjet printer alphaJET C from KBA-Metronic was made rather quickly as the solid processing and the substantial reduction of the consumables were the decisive factors in choosing a marking system.
The story of Ursula Rath began in 1965 when it was producing high-quality creams on modern production lines in Senden/Münster to be used for commercial skin protection, skin cleansing and skin care. In private and professional life, it is very important to have beautiful and healthy hands. Products from Rath are sold by the qualified specialised trade in all of Europe and in North America. The company is proud of its long-standing and good customer relations. The pr88 skin protection cream, in particular, is an international classic designed for greasy and oily dirt as well as highly adhesive dirt.
Flexibility is a must
Reliability and flexibility is a basic requirement for the manufacturer of skin protection products – these criteria have to be ensured for the filling and packaging of the products as well. The variety of packaging units such as cans, bottles, tubes, buckets and canisters in different sizes indicates the high requirements placed on product marking. In addition, special customer requests and the export business make it necessary to be able to easily change the marking to different customer and country-specific requirements. A replacement had to be found when the number of repairs on the existing inkjet printer increased. Everyone agreed that it had to be an inkjet printer.
“The alphaJET C from KBA-Metronic was the right choice,” says Matthias Rösner, the managing director of Ursula Rath. “In the case of the alphaJET C, our desire for a low-emission marking device with low consumption values was not in conflict with the requirements on the reliability and flexibility of the printing system.”
When compared with the competition, the alphaJET C primarily stands out for its low consumption values thanks to the integrated solvent recovery process. This does not only save consumption costs but verifiably reduces the machine costs as well.
Intelligent marking solution with only a minimum of effort
At Ursula Rath the marking of large product batches takes place within the production line – directly after the filling and sealing facility at high speeds. Thanks to a printhead tube which is up to 6m long, the production workers are able to remove the printhead of the inkjet printer from the production line in a few easy steps and to attach it to a translation stage for the manual marking. Smaller runs are processed at this manual station in order to provide additional customer-specific markings. Here, some of the packaging boxes receive a special marking as well – including barcodes. The standardised quick-change mounts ensure a secure hold and an exact positioning of the printhead.
The freely programmable alphaJET C operates using a contact-free continuous inkjet process. Thanks to the 48-dot matrix, the printhead of the alphaJET C can print up to six lines and the individual lines can also be shifted pixel by pixel. That makes superscript and subscript characters possible even in multi-line texts. Furthermore, the text can also be applied in a 90 degree rotated position. Thanks to this unique resolution, even the highest demands on print image and font quality can be satisfied.
Today, four years after the commissioning, Mattias Rösner is still impressed by the simple operation, the robust system and the low consumption values of the inkjet printer alphaJET C.