Diagraph's Blog | Small Character Printing
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  • Avoid Labeling Mistakes by Removing Plant Air Posted 8 months ago
    All-electric label applicators revolutionize the packaging industry by eliminating the reliance on plant air, providing precise applicator control for consistent and accurate label placement and ensuring secure label control for various label sizes.
  • Is training production line workers creating a challenge? No problem!  Posted 7 years ago
    Companies rely on engineers or technicians to keep production lines up and running. These job functions are essential to hitting production targets, so it is key that their skill level on equipment is proficient. When making the decision to replace this equipment, the amount of time and money that will have to be invested in training your labor is a major deciding factor.
  • How do I get labels to stick in hot and humid environments? Posted 4 years ago
    Something to be aware of when considering using labeling for product identification in a hot or humid environment is that labels are sensitive to temperature, making facility environment temperature a determining factor in choosing what label material to use on a product.  
  • Superior labeling power source — pneumatic air/electric labeling Posted 7 years ago
    Which is a superior labeling power source — pneumatic air or electric? There is a great debate in the packaging technology industry around the core driver.
  • How Push-Mode Piezo Print Technology Saves Significant Costs in Packaging Compliance Posted 3 years ago
    Every package printed with a noncompliant mark is a package you can’t ship, costing your company time and money. Improving print technology can help improve packaging compliance. Diagraph’s industrial inkjet printing technology was built specifically to improve print quality and production line uptime for manufacturing environments.
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Diagraphs Blog covers the latest in coding and labeling products


Achieve Consistent And Unmatched Print Quality With Superior Print Head Design
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Achieving optimal print quality with small character continuous inkjet printing (CIJ) is a constant endeavor for manufacturers. CIJ printers must be able to deliver precise drop placement at the correct speed. These two elements are significantly impacted by the print head design and fluid management. Read below to understand how the Linx 8900 Series CIJ offers the reliability and quality customers demand.
Is training production line workers creating a challenge? No problem!
Companies rely on engineers or technicians to keep production lines up and running. These job functions are essential to hitting production targets, so it is key that their skill level on equipment is proficient. When making the decision to replace this equipment, the amount of time and money that will have to be invested in training your labor is a major deciding factor.
Managing end-of-line coding needs while facing rising costs and tighter budgets
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Managing end-of-line coding needs while facing rising costs and tighter budgets
Critical Ways CIJ Printers Are The Right Technology For Your Small Character Application
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Manufacturers often require small variable information printing on their products, such as expiration dates, lot and batch codes. Discover how Diagraph's CIJ printers can help!
Ink for CIJ Printers
New accessories are also available for use with the printers, cover tube seal, splash cover, and specialty air knife kit, each designed to help food manufacturers with humid environments meet production requirements.
Top Considerations When Selecting Coding Equipment In The Dairy Industry
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Products containing animal milk are on a constant time clock. Cows must be milked every day, meaning it is possible for dairy operations to be running 24/7 to get products with an under 20-day expiration period out the door and onto shelves. In these fast-paced manufacturing environments for fluid milk, cheese, yogurt, butter and ice cream products, there are several factors that impact the method and features required for achieving legible marks and labels onto packaging.
Laser marking on nutraceutical products provide robust traceability
Nutraceuticals are a rapidly expanding market in the United States and the market is expected to continue its growth by more than 8% over the next six years*. Laser coders are an ideal solution for the nutraceuticals market as they provide robust traceability to meet every budget, line speed and substrate material need.
Increase contract packaging productivity by minimizing equipment interventions
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Marking and coding equipment should help contract packagers improve productivity. Diagraph accomplishes this by keeping equipment intervention requirements for our product identification equipment to a minimum.
Simplify use with one touch product coding solutions
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Many quality equipment manufacturers strive for an easy to use designation. When comparing the ease of use of products, nothing is simpler than distilling a process down to a single step.
Food, glorious food - the benefits of using Continuous Ink Jet
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2020 will go down in history as a challenging time for food producers. While it is vital that food supplies to supermarkets are uninterrupted and rigorous hygiene is maintained, we should not forget the importance of the printed information that is provided to the consumer when it is on the shelf. There are heavy fines for batch and date codes that do not meet required legislation, and the printed codes must meet stringent traceability requirements should any recall be needed.
You need to think about your ink
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We’ve all been there. Starving at the end of the day and rushing into a supermarket to pick up something to eat. Consumers may give a cursory glance at the best before date on the package to confirm that the item is safe to eat. They give no thought (and why should they) to how much research and development has gone into the ink displaying the information on the package. Not so for those responsible for coding and marking in the food industry.
How to Pick the Best Product Identification Solution
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Step one of a manufacturer’s game plan for packaging compliance is to understand your manufacturing code and print application requirements, in order to pick the product identification solution that is best for your needs.
Top Considerations When Selecting Coding Equipment In The Dairy Industry
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Products containing animal milk are on a constant time clock. Cows must be milked every day, meaning it is possible for dairy operations to be running 24/7 to get products with an under 20-day expiration period out the door and onto shelves. In these fast-paced manufacturing environments for fluid milk, cheese, yogurt, butter and ice cream products, there are several factors that impact the method and features required for achieving legible marks and labels onto packaging.
Inkjet Printhead Durability Drives Ease of Use
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Not all inkjet printheads are created equal. Some printheads are designed to offer superior uptime performance, making them easier to operate and use when coding product. Look for the following features when choosing an inkjet coder, whether it is a small character inkjet coder for printing on primary product packaging or a high resolution large character inkjet coder for printing on cases:
Key Considerations for Assessing Coding Equipment Uptime
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System uptime is the average length of time a piece of equipment runs between interventions are required to keep it operating smoothly. When comparing system uptime when assessing coding equipment, it is important to look at several factors including:
Top Recommended Inks for Inkjet Coding in the Dairy Industry
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No one wants to risk their health or the health of their family by bringing home dairy products with indistinguishable expiration dates. Regardless if your dairy plant produces fluid milk, cheese, yogurt or ice cream, if your product does not have a legible expiration date on it chances are your product will remain on grocer’s shelves.
How to Reduce Marking Mistakes and Ensure Proper Code Adhesion
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What does your company do when products are marked with the wrong product identification codes? Scrap? Rework? Mismarked and mislabeled products can create big hits to the bottom line. When encountering marking mistakes with regularity, companies can find it difficult to keep profit margins under control. What’s worse is if mismarked or mislabeled products make it out to market, manufacturers can face penalties from retailers and the risk of product recalls.
Is a Product Identification Site Audit Right for Your Facility?
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If you haven’t had a top-to-bottom review of your coding and labeling operations within the past 5 to 10 years, you are probably overdue for a comprehensive product identification site audit. Technological advancements have allowed for manufacturers to achieve greater efficiencies and accuracy with their product coding efforts for all levels of packaging
Marking 125 Years in Business with Special Customer Savings at PACK EXPO International
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2018 marks Diagraph’s 125th anniversary in business and we’re inviting the industry to celebrate this momentous occasion with us at PACK EXPO International in Chicago. Diagraph is exhibiting at booth N-5721 with our full line-up of product solutions including small character inkjet, high-resolution inkjet case coders, all-electric labelers and thermal transfer overprinters. Come visit us and discover our new initiatives designed to make product identification easy for our customers
What is the Diagraph Uptime Advantage?
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As a key component in our Diagraph Solution Center model, the Diagraph Uptime Advantage focuses on delivering more uptime through our products with minimal intervention requirements. We believe that our coding and labeling solutions should be the least of your worries. This is why our equipment solutions are built to withstand the toughest of manufacturing environments and consistently produce high quality marks – print after print after print.
Keep Up With Snack Packaging Trends With Smarter CIJ Technology
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No longer is it the case that snacks are packaged specifically for children’s lunch boxes. Today, the snack market is heavily geared towards adults with 94% of adults snacking at least once a day and 50% snacking 2 to 3 times a day.* Snack producers are tasked with changing traditional packaging to address a different kind of consumer.
Are You Ready to Automate Date Coding on Your Ready-to-Eat Products?
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Fast-paced lifestyles of the working class and a growing number of Millennials demanding on-the-go options are two contributing factors to the rise in the ready-to-eat (RTE) prepared foods market with a projected CAGR of 7.2% between 2016-2026 With the versatility of the packaging substrates and forms for RTE products, we are outlining some key considerations to keep in mind for date coding to still achieve demanding throughput goals.
Color Contrasting Inkjet Coder Runs Cleaner for Longer
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Diagraph is pleased to announce the launch of the Linx 8900 Plus Series – an advanced range of color contrasting inkjet technology that provides the highest levels of printer reliability and ease of use. Enhancements in printhead design and pigment particle dispersion in the Linx 8900 Series prevent common clogging issues associated with inkjet systems when using color soft pigment-based inks.
Benefits of automated coding in the meat, poultry and seafood packing industries
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According to a recent PMMI Business Intelligence Report, the meat, seafood, and poultry packing industries are experiencing “a global boom” due to several factors including import and export opportunities expanding into new markets, growth in foodservice, and growth in ready meals. Food producers are rapidly moving to automate processing and packaging to be prepared to meet increased demand and be flexible enough to adapt to changing product coding requirements.
The Top Choice for Date, Lot and Batch Coding
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Diagraph’s customers have spoken and they prefer the Linx 8900 continuous inkjet printer for their date, lot and batch doing needs! Customer feedback cited several reasons that the Linx 8900 model is their top choice.
Sneak Peek at Diagraph's PACK EXPO Las Vegas Show Specials
Diagraph is offering exclusive show specials for PACK EXPO Vegas attendees who have their badges scanned at Booth C-4010.
What Makes a Good Spare Industrial Inkjet Printer?
Downtime in your production simply isn’t an option. But at any moment, an unpredictable event can arise like low ink levels, maintenance and clogging, putting your operations on hold anywhere from an hour to an entire shift. So how do you prepare for the unexpected? One option that we see put into practice by many customers is the investment in a spare inkjet printer – a reliable, on-hand system that can quickly be fired up on a production line when your regular systems suddenly quit.
Enhance the Food Safety Process with Functional Inks
Continuous inkjet (CIJ) is the technology of choice for food packaging coding as the solvent based inks adhere to a variety of materials like cartons, plastics, films, foils, metal and glass. CIJ is ideal for food packaging in that it offers high speed, non-contact small character printing and enables food processors to incorporate inkjet codes into their functional safety and traceability processes.
Questions to Ask When Evaluating CIJ Versus Laser Coding for Your Food Production Line
Two common automated marking and coding solutions for food packaging are continuous inkjet and laser coding. Which solution best fits your application is dependent on a number of factors.
Achieve Less Downtime in Food and Bottling Lines When You Choose These Durable CIJ Features
All food and beverage manufacturers have a commitment to efficient operations and strive to increase output with maximum uptime. Many of these manufacturers require variable information such as lot or batch codes, expiration dates, or barcodes on their product and make use of Continuous Inkjet (CIJ) to achieve these required codes.
Code Adhesion: How to make inkjet codes stick to slick surfaces
Many companies, especially in meat and dairy processing, struggle with the requirement to mark variable information onto slick packaging.
Small Character Inkjet Features That Shine in the Meat Packing Industry
The meat packaging industry has coding and traceability requirements similar to other food industries, yet the cold and humid environments indicative of the industry can pose additional challenges for packaging equipment not experienced in more temperate facilities.
Top 3 CIJ Features that Minimize Product Line Changeover Touches
To accommodate the demand of retailers, manufacturers are doing shorter runs of customized products resulting in as many as three product changeovers on each line in a single shift.
Look for these 4 CIJ Features When Facing Skilled Labor Challenges
Ease of serviceability was a common pain point expressed by customers at this year’s PMMI Annual Conference “The Customer Speaks — OpX Leadership Network Panel”. Manufacturers are experiencing frequent turnover, making it difficult to keep a staff knowledgeable, up-to-date and skilled on their equipment.
These Common CIJ Maintenance Issues Could Be Affecting Your Uptime
Companies using non-contact high speed Continuous Inkjet (CIJ) technology to mark information (including expiration dates) on their product may not be aware that a key component of their marking system – the fluids – also have expiration dates.
Improved Linx Printhead Offers Advantages Over Competition
The latest Continuous Inkjet Printer from Linx Printing Technologies, the 8900 Series, reflects the fundamental Linx design philosophies of Ease of Use and Reliability and is supported by the MK11 hermetically sealed printhead that protects all critical components during operation and cleaning.
GMO labeling crisis? Here's what you should know and what you should do
Did you know there were 80 GMO labeling bills introduced in 20 states in 2015? On July 1, 2016 the first GMO labeling law will go into effect in Vermont. The Vermont law requires raw agricultural commodity and processed food producers who sell food products in or into the state of Vermont to mark the lowest saleable unit of food packaging with a disclaimer that clearly and conspicuously reads “produced with genetic engineering.”
New Non-Porous Ink Offers Darker Print and Longer Decap Times
Diagraph is now offering a newly formulated non-porous ink in an improved 45Si cartridge that will offer Thermal Jet Series technology users greater print quality on some of the most challenging non-porous substrates.
The Container You Choose for Your Brew Determines Which Coding Technology You Should Choose
Different types of technology are needed for printing on your primary (bottle or can) package and on your secondary (outer box) package. Continuous ink jet (CIJ) and laser are the most common options for printing date clodes, batch codes, other text, graphics, barcodes, QR codes and other codes onto primary beverage packages.
What would you do with 3 months?
The new printer reflects the fundamental Linx design philosophies of Ease of Use and Reliability, supported by a hermetically sealed printhead with no moving parts, self-service Easi Change module and new features such as one-touch cartridge refills and a 10” capacitive touch screen with customizable menu.
Coding is a CRAFT | Top 3 Tips for Choosing a Coding Provider
These three tips will help you choose a marking, coding and labeling equipment provider: TCO, ease of use, service support.
Outstanding Modular Stand
To achieve best quality printing with Linx Continuous Ink Jet (CIJ) printers, accurate and stable printhead placement is critical.
And our message to our Beer customers this week is… Wait, What?
Coding on cans is a necessary part of the distribution process and Continuous Inkjet Printing (CIJ) is the best fit technology for this coding requirement.
Flash the Light and Ring the Bell
Linx CIJ printers come equipped with an alarm output that indicates warnings, faults, and failures.
Where's My Code?
An unobtrusive and effective way to track products from production to market is with the addition of secure coding.
It's Positive
Many companies have the need to mark discrete variable information such as lot codes and expiration dates on their products. One of the best solutions available to address this need is Continuous Ink Jet printers (CIJ). CIJ offers non-contact high speed coding with immediate dry times resulting from the solvent based inks that are used.
Analog Hot Stamp Printing vs. Digital Thermal Transfer Printing
Many marking and coding equipment sellers espouse the virtues of thermal transfer overprinters (TTO) over the capabilities of hot stamp coders. As a manufacturer of both thermal transfer and hot stamp technologies, we are here to tell you that there is room for both. The truth is that each technology excels for very different reasons.
Improve Efficiency with the Linx 8900
The all new Linx 8900 was a hit during its debut at Pack Expo Las Vegas! Visitors loved the simple one-touch fluid refill design, the enhanced user interface paired with the large touch screen, the engineer-free self service module, and, of course, the industry leading reliability that comes with the Linx printhead.
How to Increase CIJ Coder Reliability and Uptime
Do your inkjet printheads need to be cleaned more than once a month? How often do you find yourself waiting on a service visit for routine maintenance? Do you throw away partially full fluid containers, or worse yet, do empty ink cartridges interrupt your production? These are all common issues that eat away at your production time and your bottom line.
What is a hot stamp machine?
Hot stamp machines utilize simple and reliable mechanical technology. Hot stamp printing is a process in which heated type is pressed firmly against the item you are printing with a ribbon/foil between.