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Coding upgrades at sausage maker

This California maker of premium sausages was relying on a mix of ink jet printing and thermal-transfer printing on both film and paperboard. New CIJ printers have changed everything.

Pfw 4465 Papa2 3

Papa Cantella’s is a family owned and operated company based in Vernon, CA, that specializes in premium sausages. Many of its products are vacuum packaged in flexible film and then frozen. Later, the frozen packages have a paperboard sleeve or carton applied.

In 2015, after experiencing some difficulties with lot and date coding on folding cartons, the firm decided to replace an existing ink-jet coding machine with an MK-U6000 Series Continuous Ink Jet printer from Keyence. Management was so pleased with its performance that the firm now has 11 of them in operation, seven printing black ink and four yellow. Five of the printers are in the production area where primary packaging is done, so the substrate they print on is flexible film. In one application, three of the printers are mounted over a horizontal form/fill/seal system. They are a replacement for a thermal-transfer printer that traversed across the three-up configuration of primary packages being produced. Because it’s no longer necessary to allow time for the traversing to take place, the packages are now produced at a rate of about eight/min rather than being limited to 5 or 6.

Four of the Keyence printers are in the packaging area, so typically they are printing on paperboard. Finally, two of the ink jet printers are mobile units mounted on wheels so they can be positioned where they’re needed.

According to Keyence, stable operation was the main focus during development of the MK-U6000. That’s why the printer has what Keyence calls a world’s first: an auto-shower function that cleans the ink path, nozzle, electrode plates, and gutter all at once. Manual cleaning to wash off the ink that adhered inside the head is a thing of the past, and operators appreciate being exposed to less cleaning solvent. To see the auto-shower function in action, go here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slspLej2zuc&feature=youtu.be

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