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Packaging touches everyone every day.
In the What's Up With Packaging podcast, we examine how packaging is changing and essential issues such as sustainability, legislation, compliance and more.
HP ThermaCore intro
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[00:00:00]
there's no question that thermal inkjet or TIJ printers have made great inroads into packaging applications in recent years, carrying out the duties of printing variable information onto all kinds of packaging and packaging materials. However, with the standards organization, GS1, introducing its sunrise 2027 program for the migration towards 2D barcodes, the new barcodes, unlike the current UPC codes, will often have to be printed online at the time of packaging.
Traditional TIJ printers while perfect for many texts, such as date and lot code, applications are finding themselves somewhat lacking when it comes to printing these new barcode applications.
This is mainly because the most commonly used thermal inkjet system, the HP TIJ 2.5 has a maximum print height of just over half an inch, while the new GS1, 2D barcodes, particularly when [00:01:00] encoded with the new digital link format, are often going to be wider than this. While it's possible to increase the print height of thermal printers by using a pair of print heads and stitching the print together to make a wider image, this is far from ideal.
There are also wider TIJ print heads on the market, but they are currently limited to aqueous based inks making them unsuitable for use on non-porous materials. Often found in packaging applications. I was very interested therefore in taking a look at the latest thermal inkjet concept from hp, the brand new ThermaCore printer
While I was at the HP booth at Pack Expo Las Vegas Bao Nguyen the vice President and general manager of HP's specialty printing and technology solutions. Kindly shared his thoughts on the advantages of the new 2D barcodes, as well as some insight on this new ThermaCore print platform.
So [00:02:00] we're, we're one of the trends that we're looking and paying attention to in the coding and, marking. Market is the GS1, sunrise 2027. For us, we believe that this is a one in a generation opportunity to transition from 1D barcode, which holds very basic information to 2D, which you have the ability to store richer data.
For improved traceability for product identification supply chains management, right? And also at the same time, manufacturers are ready to transform their supply chain to be able to manage, you know, from an end-to-end process. So for hp you know, our answer to the GS one sunrise 2027
solution is HP ThermaCore our TIJ product. Here is a next leap forward in innovation. [00:03:00] It is smarter, right? ThermaCore is faster and is more sustainable, right? It will help improve your production line efficiency. You know, with 1200 DPI it improves the print quality. Of the code that is vital for manufacturing lines, you know, with HP thermacore in a single scan, you know, manufacturers can pick up all these information that is encoded into the code. That would never happen be, doesn't happen before with the 1D barcode.
Thank you, Bao I agree that this transition to 2D barcodes for retail products is indeed a once in a generation opportunity. It will bring advantages to brands, manufacturers, retailers, and consumers, a very rare win win, win win situation.
It is also a rare opportunity for the solution providers and manufacturers involved in packaging and barcode printing to develop new solutions of [00:04:00] which the new ThermaCore is an example that will support this ambitious and important project. Yeah, I'm excited about the future for barcodes and the coding and marking industry.