ITL PEOPLE - Stuart Flynn - Technical Director
Stuart left school armed with a handful of O'Level GCSE certificates and headed straight for the world of full-time work. After a few "false starts" (Toys R Us), Stuart took the opportunity to join a Manchester, UK, based Textile Dye Manufacturing company called Crompton Knowles. He was employed as a lab assistant and began working on fabric dye development and colour matching projects.
A year later Stuart joined the inkjet ink world when Lyson offered him a position as a Lab assistant within their QC department. Stuart took to the role and it soon became clear that he had an aptitude for the work. He gradually moved away from the QC role and was allowed to get to work on the research and development of new inks. He began formulating, testing and developing ground-breaking inkjet inks and his skills allowed him to reach the rank of Chief Chemist within a couple of years of joining the company. Over time it would be proven that Toys R Us’s loss was undoubtedly the printing industry’s gain.
Some of Stuart’s early work whilst there challenged existing processes. At this time, in the mid 1990’s, their ink was being supplied onto the Airbrush series of Vutek machines but was delivered to the customer in two separate containers. The colour was derived from a fluid which Stuart describes as “looking like paint” and then a solvent thinner was added by the user. The mixture had to be measured and tweaked until it was at the correct viscosity to run in the machine. This process had to be followed on a daily basis and users could spend up to an hour a day mixing and measuring the ink before being able to start up the machine.
Stuart developed a much simpler solution – a new fluid that that was Newtonian based (“viscosity controlled”) which allowed the ink to be supplied as a single, finished fluid. The user received a more convenient-to-use product which was reliably consistent in terms of viscosity. The new product allowed users of those machines to reduce their ink costs and helped them to significantly increase productivity.
Stuart was involved in other OEM projects whilst there working on inks for the Idanit 162, Matan Grandjet, Jemtex, and Scitex Outboard & Blueboard printers. He also devised a water based ink that would run on a Xaar 128 head, which even Xaar themselves thought was impossible. Stuart was developing ink formulations and was also beginning to design manufacturing processes, tackling issues with raw materials and solving specific manufacturing process issues which had tortured printer and ink manufacturers for years.
The sign printing market changes forever...
An idea Stuart had in 1998 was to attempt to formulate a solvent based ink which would run succesfully through an Epson print head. Amazingly, the early tests on these inks were performed on a Stylus Photo 800 printers and were succesfully printed onto self-adhesive vinyl at high resolutions, up to and including 1440dpi. A period of testing continued to produce great results and the first Outdoor ink was ready for market. The successful completion of this project would have enormous consequences not only for Stuart and for Lyson, but for the printing industry as a whole. To truly appreciate the significance you need to put this work into context. At that time solvent based inks were primarily used on Grand Format printers and were only capable of printing reliably at 180 or 360 dpi. The expense of the superwide-format printers, typically priced around £250K meant that the production of outdoor signage, billboards, banners, vehicle graphics, etc, was open only to a handful of large and established printing companies who could afford to invest large sums of money in one machine.
Roland were informed of the LOD ink development and were interested in trying the ink on their FJ series of printers, a model originally designed to run water based dye and pigment inks. After successful testing they began supplying the LOD inks along with a “conversion kit” package to make all parts of their FJ printers solvent ready. Roland converted their own stock of machines and offered them as a finished product to a huge new market of small sign makers who had an interest in the commercial benefits of producing outdoor signage but couldn’t afford the investment in Grand Format print technology.
The barriers to entry into the sign printing market were torn down and small printers and sign makers could now spend the relatively small sum of £15K on a converted Roland printer which could run a solvent based ink, print onto coated or uncoated vinyl substrates and produce print that could be displayed outdoors for a number of years without lamination. The status quo was being challenged and the other manufacturers were scrambling to get a piece of the action. The main printer brands in the wide format graphics printing markets, who, to this point, had been producing machines to run water based pigment inks, focussed their energies on developing similar solutions to compete with the Roland printer / LOD model. It wasn’t long before there were Mutoh, Mimaki, Agfa, Roland and Uniform solvent ready printers on the market and the whole thing just exploded into life.
Stuart was also inventing another new concept at this time, working on an idea that he could significantly expand colour gamut by adding a red and blue ink to the standard CMYK colours. The Hexachrome approach (which used orange and green alongside CMYK) could increase colour gamut and improve the printing of spot colours and fruit. However, the Pentachrome system, with its red and blue inks, allowed superior and more accurate printing of all skin tones, allowing them to be more accurately represented in inkjet prints. This concept has since become very popular with Epson using reds and blues on their desktop R800 and R1800 printers and Canon have used those ink colours on their wide format printers.
Ink Technologies Limited provides new challenge...
This was one of the final ink developments for Stuart at Lyson. In 2002 Ink Technologies Limited was in the process of being formed by former colleagues and Stuart’s abilities were recognised when he was offered his own share in the new company. He joined ITL as Technical Director and was able to work on creating a whole new range of inks.
According to Stuart, the ITL philosophy from day one was to be “doing what the market wants rather than trying to make what they don’t have”. Inks were formulated with sustainability and the safety of the user in mind and products like ITL EPS inks were developed using food grade pigments and bio-degradable solvents a long time before it became popular to consider these aspects of ink production.
Other new products followed and ITL TCN inks were added to the range to provide extreme adhesion and wider substrate compatibility on Mutoh Toucan printers. These inks were designed to be printed onto the widest range of both coated and uncoated inkjet substrates as well as on to non-standard materials. One of the first customers to use the TCN inks was a North American textile company who had spent months trying to print onto a non-standard fabric they had designed for use in Premium car and boat upholstery. They tried both OEM and other third party inks, but found the only ink that could adhere to the materials was ITL’s TCN product.
Stuart observes that it is either because of a lack of real innovation or due to the speed at which third parties are trying to get their new products to market that the mistakes of the OEM’s are often being copied and repeated in new third-party ink products. Stuart believes he has found fundamental issues with many of the eco-solvent inks currently on the market and the new formulations which Stuart has designed have addressed the key issues. The alcohol, abrasion and scratch resistance of ITL’s second generation eco- solvent inks, Evo Sol, are estimated to be twice as good as other inks on the market because the formulations get to the root of the problem. Using alcohol-soluble raw materials is always going to produce inks with a poor level of alcohol resistance meaning that most inks will not stay on the substrate particularly well when cleaned with alcohol based cleaning fluids. This is a real issue for printers who want their banners, billboards and advertising hoardings to look presentable for the duration of a campaign and Stuart's Evo Sol formulation is the product that has addressed the issue.
The answer for most eco-solvent ink users is to laminate the finished prints, but of course, this adds another cost to the print production process. Most of the fade resistance claims may well be accurate, however, there is some debate about the need for the lamination of prints made with solvent based, and particularly with eco-solvent inks; which suggests that there is definitely something in what Stuart has observed. Most media manufacturers recommend overcoating printed vehicle graphics whether made with eco, mild or full solvent inks. The usual line that appears alongside the details of most eco-solvent is that “lamination is not required but is recommended”. There does not appear to be a definitive answer to this question at the moment – ITL’s Evo Sol inks outperform most of the competition at the moment according to Stuart.
The other main aspect of Stuart’s philosophy as Technical Director at ITL was to gain ISO9001 certification as this would allow him to control the consistency and the quality of ITL’s finished products. The procedures are documented and they need to be followed in a routine manner. They act as a double-check to ensure that raw material supply is consistent and it also provides production operators with repeatable processes they can follow and everything can be back-checked against previous batches. Control of these areas combined with very tight product specifications for every formulation helps with production problem solving, ensures product uniformity and gives confidence to staff internally and externally to customers.
The future of inkjet inks – The new mantra within the industry is related to Eco but now we have Bio inks. The new sets of ink entering the market are using organic corn based Lactates but do not actually offer any other benefits to the user compared to standard Lactates – they produce the same odour and have the same health risks. The Lactates used for these applications are Bio-produced but that is the only differential between them. “The Lactates that have been used in our products from day one are supplied into the food industries.”
“My impression of the present market is that users are being told what to use rather than being given the full selection to make a choice. The difficulties for innovation will be limited due to the competitive nature and ensuring costs stay reasonable.”
Stuart lives near Stockport with his girlfriend and three children.
sales@itlgb.com
T: +44 (0) 161 495 3900
