In this two-part article, David looks at Landa, the Nanographic Printing® technology, including additional new developments and offerings in preparation for drupa 2016.
It was almost 4 years ago that Benny Landa excited the crowds at drupa 2012 with his latest venture, Landa Digital Printing, a company focused on a new printing technology called Nanography. For those of you who are not familiar with Benny Landa, he unveiled the first digital press in 1993, launched Indigo in 1997, and subsequently sold the company to HP in 2001. After selling Indigo to HP, Benny changed his focus to research in nanotechnology and how it might be used for energy creation. As a result of some of his research, and his background in print technologies and processes, he realized that he could also design a printing process using nanotechnology. From there, he began development in earnest with the goal of creating a digital printing process and press that could ultimately replace offset printing with equal or better quality and efficiency, and meeting the cost bar set by offset for longer runs.
Since this new development is a production inkjet technology at its core, albeit a unique approach, he chose drupa 2012 as the venue for introduction. It was undoubtedly the right place and the right time. The crowds were excited, and an estimated 400 businesses lined up to purchase a letter of intent for the first batch of presses that would come off the production line. At that time, I wrote a little about the announcement here and here, but held off until more details were available.
The presses shown at that event, based on this new technology, were expected to begin shipping within 18 of the event, although that never happened. The Landa team realized that this was going to be a much bigger effort than any of the very experienced team expected. Ultimately there was a big spread between the concept and the execution. They realized that when you are pushing the envelope on material science, data rates, jetting rates, speed, quality, etc., there are a lot of moving parts that need to be addressed. So instead of shipping product, they went back to the labs in Rehovot, Israel, to address outstanding issues and use the feedback they received at drupa and subsequent visits to about 150 printing businesses around the world to refine the functional design. Between then and now, Landa Digital Print has also taken on another investor, the Altana Group, to help both financially and technically. While the basic technology that will be shown at drupa 2016 is still the same as it was at drupa 2012, there have been many changes to the products over the last four years, and there is a lot more to talk about now.
