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.
Hitachi 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 Hitachi and Van Alstine to implement the new traversing application initially on four production lines at two plants, using RX-SD160W printers.
Van-Alstine and Hitachi 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.
