With over 200 years of combined industry experience Rotech has the answers to even the most difficult queries. Discover our most frequently asked questions below.
Consumables
The list below shows what consumables you can purchase from our Buy Rotech online shop:
We only provide the best quality consumables, to ensure that your equipment runs optimally at all times.
Thermal Transfer Ribbon
Yes. Most thermal printers have a single printhead, so to print in colour, you simply replace the black ribbon with a coloured one. However, process colour printers—which can print multiple colours and a black barcode in one pass—are available, though they are more expensive than standard desktop units.
For barcodes, always use a black or dark ribbon to ensure readability.
There’s a limited range of coloured ribbons available for most thermal printers, and we’re happy to help you choose the best option for your label material and application—just ask!
When selecting the right ribbon for your application, consider the following:
The ribbon should be wider than the label material to protect the printhead from abrasion.
Example: A 70mm wide label requires an 80mm wide ribbon.
The cost of thermal transfer ribbons depends on several key factors:
Continuous Inkjet Printing
LEIBINGER has it’s own ink laboratory, where ink experts are consistently working to further improve the performance of inks and create new formulas.
Within the range, there are inks with the following properties:
The EcoSolv recycling system, used in LEIBINGER printers condensates evaporated solvent, resulting in up to 50% less solvent consumption than conventional CIJ.
There is also no cleaning required when starting up or shutting down the printer, so operators do not need to constantly handle solvents. This ensures a safe working enviornments for your employees and your production area, as it remains clean and free of solvent residue. What’s more by eliminating the need for cleaning agents, you reduce your environmental footprint.
A continuous inkjet (CIJ) printer is a non-contact coding technology, ideal for high-speed, high-volume production lines. It continuously expels ink droplets, directing only those needed to form characters, while recycling the rest.
LEIBINGER’s nozzle seal ensures consistent high-quality prints without the need for cleaning procedures and ensures maximum printer availability. When the printer is not in use, the nozzle seals the ink circuit 100% airtight. This prevents ink from drying and lines from clogging, enabling instant start ups and high-quality printing at any time.
The IQJET beats any CIJ on the market, with it’s fully automatic nozzle seal, there’s no need for frequent cleaning. The award-winning design is so innovative, you only service it once every 5 years. With over 85% integration, LEIBINGER controls nearly every step of manufacturing, resulting in excellent quality control. Eco-solve condensates evaporated solvent, resulting in up to 50% less solvent consumption than conventional CIJ. Its intuitive design with touch screen and SMARRT.OS makes it easy to operate.
Feeding Systems
Feeding systems are an excellent fit for small to medium sized businesses, including those operating high-volume production lines. Cost-effective options are available, such as the RF Lite, out most compact standalone system.
Yes, our RF1 feeder can accomodate both a labeller and a printer on the same system. If you wish to install a thermal transfer printer, a conveyor extension may be necessary. A typical application of this setup is applying a date code to a food sleeve, followed by a promotional label such as “new recipe” or “meal deal”.
Absolutely. We supply all the necessary brackets and handle the full integration process, ensuring you receive a complete, ready to use system. We can also incorporate cameras into our compliant systems, provided they meet required specifications.
A feeding system is a machine that has specifically been designed for coding and marking productions off-line (away from the main production line). Once fitted with a coding and/or labelling technology, they provide a standalone solution for the feeding and coding of packaging in it’s flat form.
To use a feeding system, you simply stack the product in the hopper and watch as it is automatically fed under the printer, labeller (or both) before being returned to a stack, ready for operator removal.
Feeding systems, when fitted with a coding and/or labelling technology, are capable of coding/labelling a diverse range of packaging in its flat form, including Tyvek, cartons, sleeves and pouches.
This is the alternative collection device to the catcher. As the feeder runs, the speed of the shingling conveyor automatically adjusts to allow products to overlap in a controlled manner. Once they reach the end of the ramp, they are collected by the operator, ensuring continuous operation and maximum throughput without interruptions.
RF Lite
The RF Lite is designed for production volumes of up to 14,000 products per day. For higher throughput requirements, the RF Auto offers a more robust solution capable of processing up to 25,000 products per day.
No, the RF Lite only requires either a 240v or 110v electrical supply. Simply plug the appropriate power cord from a wall socket into the IEC connection on the RF Lite and switch it on.
No, the components of the RF Lite are manufactured from stainless steel, anodised aluminium and engineered plastics. As such, they just need a wipe over with a duster.
However, care should be taken when setting up the printer position. If the inkjet printer is not set correctly, ink may be printed onto the conveyor belt or stainless-steel base plate. This can be cleaned with an alcohol wipe.
The RF Lite can handle packaging sizes up to 300 x 200mm. Changing the infeed hoppers to suit different packaging formats is tool-free and can be completed in a matter of seconds, making it easy to switch between jobs.
With a linear speed of 60 meters per minute, the RF Lite typically delivers an output of 200 to 400 pieces per minute. However, due to the rapid pace at which the hopper is emptied, products are usually processed in batches. Under these conditions, achieving a daily throughput of 10,000 units is easily attainable within a standard working day.
The RF Lite comes with a factory set “low” and “high” speed settings, which can be selected with the flip of a switch. Any adjustments to these preset speeds can only be carried out by a Rotech engineer.
Our system complies with all UK legislation including the CE and UKCA marks and has been designed with operator safety as priority. It uses TIJ which is maintenance free, clean and self-contained. But we also use CIJ (continuous inkjet technology) which has a self-sealing nozzle to ensure there is no printhead clogging and is also cartridge based.
All of Rotech’s feeding systems are designed, prototyped and built here in the UK – specifically in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire.
In the UK, once the warranty has expired, we plan to offer an exchange system (extended warranty) based on an annual fee.
The printer is capable of printing fixed information (such as the heading “USE BY”), a variable which the operator enters, such as the date code itself and an automatically generated code such as Julian date. It can also print simple logos and barcodes.
We can be contacted for a service visit, or alternatively the RF Lite can be sent to us for repair.
In the event of a fault, we will send out a service-exchange unit for next day delivery to minimise production downtime. The faulty unit can be returned to us in the same packaging.
We believe there is nothing to match the RF Lite in terms of ease of use, speed and most importantly, cost.
Thermal inkjet (TIJ) technology is built round HP cartridge systems but utilizes specially formulated inks design to adhere effectively to a wide range of substrates, including both porous and non-porous materials. The RF Lite can also be equipped with Continuous Inkjet (CIJ), our LEIBINGER range can be see here. These CIJ systems are also cartridge based and have a self-sealing nozzle system for when not in use.
The RF Lite was originally developed for food producers using sleeves that require date coding. However, its versatility makes it suitable for a wide range of industries that need late-stage customisation such as adding date codes, batch numbers or other variable data. Its ideal for small, flat form packaging like cards, sleeves, or cartons provided they fall within the supported size range.
RF Compliance
The benefits of the RF Compliance can be broken down into three main categories
The Compliance system offers an off-line facility for printing or labelling on pharmaceutical cartons. This offers many benefits:
Various inspection functions can be carried out to ensure both that the correct product is being used and also to confirm that the correct information has been added to the pack.
Legislation requiring packs to bear a unique serialisation code is growing and the Compliance can either produce these codes internally or receive them from an external source. With all serialised packs bearing a 2D datamatrix code, the need for perfect pack presentation is even more important.
Fundamentally it needs to be able to read the information at the speed at which it will be passing by on the conveyor. After this it’s just a case of taking care of the signals in and out. The feeder will provide a ‘look now’ trigger and look for a ‘Judgement Complete’ and ‘Good’ signal back. If both of these are received the product is accepted, if just the firm, it is rejected and if neither are returned, the product is rejected, feeding is halted and an error message is displayed to say the camera is not functioning correctly.
The RF Compliance is our flagship feeding system, designed for highly regulated industries such as pharmaceutical and medical. The system is for off-line late-stage customisation of flat-form product packaging, required for product traceability. It can have one of two in-feed systems which makes it capable of handling almost any flat-form packaging. It is also usually equipped with an inspection system, product collation belt and a thermal inkjet printer.
The Compliance is capable of printing in OCR-B font as small as 1mm in height, datamatrix and QR codes in up to 900 dpi.
If there is a print there and it’s of a similar pattern to a reference sample. Though only the overall pattern is being matched, not each letter, nor the 2D barcode.
The camera takes an image and reads the information that it finds. It does this using a 2D datamatrix tool for the barcode and an “OCR” tool for the text. It can then compare the information read to reference information entered by the operator (which can be done via a “teach” facility using a reference sample) and decides if it matches (this is the ‘OCV’ bit – verification).
As 2. above, but the system also tells you how good a quality the print is – it ‘grades’ it – though this only applies to the barcode.
There is a key point to note on this: The ISO/IEC 15415 standard for the verification of datamatrix barcodes requires that a number of images are taken with the lighting coming from different angles each time. Clearly this is not possible on-line, so any system fitted to one of our feeders can only offer an “indicative” grade. Therefore the use of a bench top verifier that gives a grading to this standard and then compares the two results is also preferable.
The online system would normally err on the side of caution so a grade B on-line, may be an A under the verifier. This means that so long as the on-line system is passing grade Cs and above, they must be good.
Terminology is somewhat key here, when referencing to a “good quality code”, it would be better to simply say a “good code” i.e. the camera can confirm that the correct information is printed. Quality takes us into the realms of verification.
Coding & Marking Systems
Choosing the right coding or marking technology depends on several key factors:
Need help narrowing it down? We’ll guide you to the right solution for your product. Just ask.
Coding and marking refers to the process of applying variable data to products during late-stage production. These can be serial numbers, batch codes, use by dates or product names. It can support traceability and marketing, its most often a legal requirement driven by industry.
Thermal Inkjet Printing
Yes – although we do not recommend this due to the systems and cartridges that we supply being tuned to match each other for optimum performance read by a simple connection/interface by the printer once the cartridge is inserted. In addition to this, as the ink delivery system relies on a vacuum within the cartridge, replenishing/refilling can often lead to air being allowed to enter, subsequently leading to degradation of performance.
Yes – Our standard iDESIGN software package has a built-in ‘control’ page that allows connection to multiple printers. All printers are supported and utilise their own unique IP address. Printers can be named to reflect the lines that they are mounted to. Wireless networking is also available, we can provide details of upgrades to the printers where necessary.
Yes- yellow, green, white, blue, red and even UV inks are all available for our thermal inkjet printers. Further additions to the colour range are expected as development continues.
We select the appropriate ink grade based on substratum. A key thing to avoid as with any print technology is a wet or damp surface which will hinder the ability of the ink to ‘adhere’ to the surface.
All of our systems can accept true type fonts in addition to built-in standard fonts within the printer memory. Unlike many other printing technologies we can also print variable data formats, using the font chosen as the software ‘writes’ the character set to the printer.
No, our sealed cartridges are simple to handle and don’t require any specialist PPE. They are safe for everyday use and disposal does not involve any special procedures.
No, the TIJ systems can all be simply ‘turned-off’ at the end of a shift. Removal of the cartridge is a simple operation with a click-in/click-out and even if the systems are inadvertently shut-down, for example, there is loss of power to the line, no ink will be wasted or ejected, causing no detrimental effect to the ink solution or printer. Once power is restored, the systems all perform a quick software check, read the cartridge and then reset themselves ready to continue printing.
All of our systems (excluding special models such as Shutter and IP65 units) only require a single phase 240v supply. This is regulated down to a safe working voltage via the PSU (power supply).
Our thermal inkjet systems feature built-in software that allows the user to optimise usage per print by ‘grey scaling’. For example, when printing a simple expiry date onto a light substrate – an application that doesn’t require true black print density – the operator can adjust the settings to achieve better usage per cartridge.
Our TIJ systems are exceptionally easy to integrate into a wide range of packaging lines and equipment. Their compact size, lightweight design, and simple adjustability make them ideal for almost any set up. With no bulky controllers or ink delivery units, they can be seamlessly retrofitted often using exiting mounting.
Our TIJ systems typically offer a lower cost per print, even on consumables alone.
When comparing to TTO, consider extra costs like ribbon and printhead replacements, downtime from servicing, snapped ribbons, waste disposal and set up time. For conventional CIJ, factor in maintenance, part replacements, startup/shut down, and risks like ink spills from improper shutdowns.
Thermal inkjet (TIJ) printers require a lower upfront investment compared to conventional CIJ or TTO systems. Their simplicity means less training, minimal installation requirements, and no need for extended production line shutdowns during set up.
Prints per cartridge is based upon several factors that can be controlled by the operating system of the printer. For example, larger characters require more ink. As do formats which contain multiple lines of text, barcodes and graphics. Different font styles can also affect the cost per print.
As a rough guide, to print a batch code consisting of a single line of 3mm text containing 5 characters, you can expect to achieve 1 Million prints per cartridge. A best before date and batch number with a time code may be closer to 350-450K prints per cartridge.
Clean handling – The ink is fully enclosed within the cartridge, eliminating spills from pouring or refilling.
Maintenance-free – Each cartridge contains its own ink delivery system, so it’s replaced with every cartridge change, removing the need for ongoing maintenance.
Efficient use – TIJ uses “drop-on-demand” technology, meaning only the required amount of ink is used, with no need for recirculation.
Reliable
Easy-to-use
Cost-effective
The operating temperature of our systems is listed between 05-40 degrees. However, this is largely due to the ink cartridge.
Where necessary, we can adjust parameters to increase the pre-heat temperature of the ink, such as in a cold store or low ambient environment. Compared to CIJ and TTO, the TIJ range has added flexibility due to these additional parameters.
We also have a series of ‘special’ systems for demanding environments. IP65 rated printers can be used in wet and arduous environments and shutter systems in dusty and dirty packaging conditions.
Our standard systems use a single cartridge that measures 12.7mm, which is perfect for product identification, batch, best before and use by data.
You can print multiple lines of text within the printable ‘height’ of the cartridge, by dividing the character size (height) into the overall height of the cartridge aperture (12.7mm). Total print distance (in direction of material travel) is 2M although this can be extended if required.
If you require additional print height then we can use our single heads and ‘stitch’ up to eight heads with a single controller. This provides an overall print height of 101.6mm. Each head can be set to run at different parameters and include different data.
Thermal inkjet is a non-contact printing technology in which thermal energy is used to expel ink through a nozzle and onto a substrate. TIJ can print at high speeds on to a wide range of different packaging materials, reliably and cost-effectively.
Due to the zero maintenance requirements of the TIJ printers we have seen no demand for offering service contracts on these systems. They truly are a maintenance free product with no filters, pumps or complicated ink delivery systems. They also benefit from the entire ink delivery system being within a sealed cartridge which can be disposed of through the normal channels of printer cartridge recycling companies.
Thermal Inkjet (TIJ) can print on a wide range of porous and non-porous packaging types. The key is matching the right ink grade to the substrate—similar to more costly conventional CIJ and TTO systems.
Rotech offers a variety of ink grades tailored to different applications, and we provide free sample testing through our TopMarks service to ensure the best match for your needs.
Essentially, anywhere where we can place the printer where the material is in motion and space allows us to present the printhead to the product. For example- Labelling / Flo-Wrapping / Vertical Form Fill and Seal (VFFS) / Horizontal Form Fill and Seal (HFFS) / Cartoners / Baggers
Large Area Printing
Yes, a second head can be positioned opposite the first and configured to print in the opposite direction, allowing you to print on both sides in one pass.
No, although a white background is required to achieve a Grade A barcode. However, printing onto a brown surface still produces a code that easily meets the verification standard.
No. If the speed varies, an encoder can be added to the printer to track the speed and ensure the print is perfectly formed. If the product does move at a constant speed, the line speed can be entered into the printer controller.
For the best print quality, (especially for barcodes) the box should just touch the headplate as the nozzles are slightly recessed.
Ink is supplied in bottles that are simply used to top-up the reservoir of either system.
Typically no more than a couple of hours, but it can be a lot faster depending on the circumstances.
The print can be made horizontally, or downwards, but not upwards.
Undisturbed, the printers require no maintenance. If knocked, some air may be drawn into the nozzles. For the Poziflow system, this is automatically expelled. For the FreeFlow system, it can be purged using a priming tube.
Depending on material and environmental requirements. Some inks are water based or oil based while others are solvent based to allow the ink to dry on non-absorbent surfaces.
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