Kraft Foods was considering a faster 8-cup filling system, to fill and close packages in its food plants. This OEM system, capable of 55 traverse cycles per minute, required an inkjet solution to print high-quality codes and keep pace with the new filling system while maintaining clean printheads. A competitor’s printer had failed this test, experiencing multiple faults within a 30 minute period.
IMS-Partners and Van Alstine, with deep experience fitting Hitachi printers into food manufacturing, worked together with Hitachi to establish the solution’s viability for Kraft. The Hitachi RX SD160W ran 3 hours 20 minutes in tests without any issues or faults. The printhead remained clean and the print quality was outstanding.
Impressed with the results, Kraft Foods asked IMS-Partners and Van Alstine to implement the new traversing application initially on four production lines at two plants, using RX-SD160W printers.
Van-Alstine and IMS-Partners installed four RX-SD160W units for traversing applications at two US facilities. Once in production, Kraft Foods achieved the higher traverse speed, fill reliability, and optimal print quality that it required.