Compare to the previous Gamma printers, the Gamma XD Series feature a new, innovative printer design with new technologies that have significantly enhanced its performance. This new series of digital printers for pigmented ceramic inks, in fact, is the result of the experience developed by Durst, the first company to develop and introduce a digital printer dedicated to the ceramic industry back in 2004. The Gamma XD Series, thanks to its new printer concept with a new high performance and cost efficient printhead design and ink management system, provides an unreached print quality, reliability, and design flexibility. Gamma XD printers are rated the best single pass digital ceramic printers in terms of long-term repeatability, important for re-reproducing the same tile collections over time, uptime and very low service and maintenance costs.
Among the exclusive features of the system, the excellent print quality and the absence of lines or banding, the unique uniformity that also allows the reproduction of difficult uniform designs, the versatility that sets no design limits and the use of proprietary heads based on Dimatix components. Characterized by total nozzle stability and an extremely long-life cycle, Durst's redesigned print heads are suitable for solvent based and waterbased inks and ensure the highest quality even for complex processes such as direct printing on a white background. With a significant initial investment, the long-term Gamma XD proves to be a cost-effective solution with optimized performance and extremely low total cost of ownership.
Gamma XD guarantees high repeatability and reliability, essential for ceramic companies to assure a total printer availability and to run 24/7 production. Analyses of Durst Gamma XD systems installed at customers' premises show an average availability/uptime ranging from 98-100% and this without the need of changing print heads, even after having produced over 10 million m2 of tiles in one year with one single printer.
Latest trend in the tile design are almost uniform colors with very smooth density changes to follow the need for larger spaces. Such designs as illustrated look easy, but are the most difficult ones to print repeatably, but require a 100% print uniformity and total nozzle stability as offered by the Durst Gamma XD Series printers.
The need to reduce inventories of finished products, and thus optimize warehouses by producing smaller batches, is the basis for the great interest of customers in the much higher performance of the Durst Gamma XD series compared to alternative technologies.
Among the features of Gamma XD most appreciated by the many established and new customers, the guarantee of a continuous, repetitive and perfect uniformity of printing, the absence of banding and downtime. This also applies to complex processes with direct printing on a white background without the need to color the glaze or to use colored glazes to hide printing defects. This allows to optimize the production by bringing the products with colored glazes to white glazes, increasing the flexibility and reducing the number of glazes in use. Results obtained thanks to the performance of these printers that ensure a constant level of very high quality without the need for adjustments before or during each new start of production.
When deciding to purchase a new printer, an increasing number of customers, based on their experience with various printer technologies, consider the following points to be more important than just the pure purchase price:
When taking into consideration and calculating all costs and time invested to obtain and/or repeat the same results over time a “good enough” decision when purchasing a new digital printer is not always the most economical one over an average life span of 4 years.