T-Mark’ s M2 printers score a gold for butter maker’ s productivity
T-Mark has supplied two if its new, own-brand, thermal inkjet printers, to help butter and ghee manufacturer, Whitacre Gold, reduce the downtime and maintenance costs they experienced with their previous set up.
The family business produces jars of ghee and blocks of butter, both of which require labelling with batch number and best before information. For added complexity, the label on the jars has two separate boxes, which must both be filled with product information.
For marking the labels on its jars of ghee, Whitacre Gold was using a thermal inkjet printer, which was incorporated into the label making machine. Because of this integration, it was difficult to add the second printhead, required to print in the second of the two data boxes.
For printing the wrappers for its blocks of butter, Whitacre had been using a Continuous Inkjet Printer, which did not suit the company’ s purposes as they did
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not need to run it 24 / 7. When used intermittently, the printer tended to get clogged and needed regular cleaning, as well as regular costly servicing.
Looking at how to meet both sets of requirements, T-Mark proposed its M2 printers, which offer the most cost-effective solution.
On the jar labelling production line, the printer can use two printheads, creating an overall print height of 25mm, which means Whitacre Gold can print a separate message in each box on the jar label. It also gives the flexibility to mark different sized labels by simply adjusting the size of the message. The printers are straightforward to programme with a touch-screen interface, making the message creation quick and easy.
The information box on the butter wrapper can easily be printed within the 12.5mm print height of a single printhead. So, a second M2 printer with a single printhead has been combined with an encoder and a sensor to print the product and best before information on the wrapper before it is wrapped around the butter block. The new system needs minimal maintenance as any quality issues can be solved by simply switching the ink cartridge.
Ben Richardson from T-Mark said:“ We are delighted to have been able to help Whitacre Gold solve their printing problems. They can now mark both jar sizes of ghee which have different label sizes. They have a simple interface that they are confident using, which is the same for both printers. They are happy they can now spend less time and money maintaining the printers.”
T-Mark is a subsidiary of Timbermark ID Systems Ltd, an Oxfordshire based company, which has been providing inkjet printers to the timber and packaging industries since 2004.
www. t-mark. co. uk 0330 153 8320