The three printers in the series, the Ax150i, Ax350i and Ax550i, had their official launch on 1 November and will be shown for the first time at Pack Expo, US.
Cambridge-headquartered Domino said it had “rewritten the rules of coding and marking” for continuous inkjet with the new print units, which are priced from £5,000, depending on configuration and model.
According to Domino group product manager David Bywater, the units are available on a "relaxed financing initiative" to users, giving them an extended warranty over five years and fluids and consumables at a fixed price per month.
Bywater said the Ax systems had been tested extensively over the past year at beta sites in mainland Europe and the US.
Bywater said: “This process started in earnest about three years ago and has been one of the biggest investments we’ve made for quite a while. The science of continuous inkjet was originally developed at Cambridge so a lot of the industry started around that area and we are still here.
“These machines will replace the functionality of our current product range. We will bring in a few additional features and additional capabilities by May next year and by the end of 2017 will have replaced all of our current continuous inkjet products with the machines."
The entry-level 150i is targetted at lower-volume users and lower-cost regions, the 350i is the fastest and intended for high volumes, and the 550i is the most robust, being made of marine grade stainless steel.
The 150i and 550i both print at 5.1m/s, while the 350i prints at 7.2m/s. Bywater said they print at speeds faster than anything Domino has produced before and take media at "any size and thickness within reason" as long as it can be presented to the printheads.
The printers were developed using Domino’s 'three pillars of innovation': its i-Pulse printheads and inks, its i-TechX electronics and software platform, and Domino Design, which it referred to as “a fresh approach” to product design.
The i-Pulse printheads incorporate a new frequency-matched drop generator and can, according to Bywater, consistently create the perfect drop. He described the printheads as being the biggest scientific technology leap Domino has made with the machines.
There are around 40 i-Pulse inks available, designed to print on a variety of continuous inkjet applications, including frozen food packaging and returnable glass bottles. Not all inks are available for the three printers, the 150i doesn’t function with opaque, for example.
The i-Techx software platform is designed to eliminate coding errors and integrate the Ax into any Domino production line. The Domino Cloud allows its operators to remotely monitor the printers’ performance over the internet.
According to Bywater, Domino Design accounts for a whole range of new features.
He said: “The product works for the customer in all sorts of different environments, with a whole bunch of features, environmental robustness, marine grade stainless steel, easy-to-change inks and software servicing done automatically.”
In August, Domino announced it had started work on a new production facility in China.
