How fast are today's meat production lines?
Iberian pork and meat is famous for its quality and Ham and Sausages from Iberia are known for being especially delicious. The Iberian Peninsula, an area divided between Spain and Portugal, is where the Iberlinares family business calls home.
Iberlinares has more than 40 years of experience in the production and commercialization of Iberian pork products. Their hams and sausages are produced to the famed Iberian tradition while using modern production technology.
For printing on Polyethylene Meat Packaging Films, Iberlinares engineers were looking for a flexible printing solution that could adapt to printing on multiple positions on the same or different products - and do it on multiple production lines. Of course, the printer had to be cost-efficient and be capable of integrating smoothly with Iberlinares’ production lines printing on 8 different products.
Are modern printers up to the task of current meat packaging?
Like many modern Food production facilities, every product line has its own label and codes. That, of course is well-known amongst many industries. What isn't know is the incredible speed that many modern cured meat factories like Iberlinares are running.
At their facility, believe it or not, production is so fast a print has only one second to dry so the demand on inks was well-known. In addition, the print needs to adhere reliably to the PE meat wrapping film and the coding solution needs to be safe to use on food packaging.
Plus, as industrial printers installed in a meat production environment, these coders needed to function reliably in varying ambient temperatures - and do it reliably and at the speed needed to keep profitability up.
What Type of Printer Works in Meat Packaging for PE Film?
Even before worrying about the speed, what type of printer technology can do the job: Thermal Inkjet. It sits squarely in that Goldilocks zone between speed, safe, reliable coding and ultimate ability to work in demanding environments.
For the Domino Gx-Series TIJ, a centralized controller can be set up in a safe location up to 25m from the production line. This controller can work with four (4) independently functioning printheads for maximum impact across a production line. So for this application only two printing systems using 4 printheads each are needed. This simplifies integration while keeping the cost of investment down.
Gx350i Deployed at Iberlinares
The Gx350i features Domino’s common QuickStep 3 user interface, which the operators at Iberlinares find is very user-friendly making message editing and operating the printer easy. For example, if the same label is used for various print positions, it only needs to be configured once and can then simply be sent to all printheads.
As the printers are in food processing environments, the units and their surroundings must be kept clean by law. The Gx350i produces a very clean, clear print without ink spilling, making it the perfect printer for their production lines.
The inks we supply have to be specific for the job too: Domino’s BK119 ink offers a high-contrast, great adhesion and very short dry time, satisfying the one second or less dry time. In addition, our BK119 ink is food packaging safe and compliant to EuPIA and manufactured according to GMP.
As for the running of the printers, the Gx-Series have almost zero requirements for service and maintenance. Only the cartridges need to be changed – a simple, click-and-fit task done by an operator. Resulting in maximizing Iberlinares’ production capability.
Ultimately, the Gx350i is a great coding solution for Iberlinares’ meat production as it is clean, easy to use and reliable.