“Previously we had been using continuous ink jet machines from another supplier,” said Avon’s engineering team leader John Hurst. “Unfortunately they proved to be unreliable and quite messy due to the intermittent nature of the lines and the fact that stops can be frequent. So we urgently needed to find an alternative machine to print customer messages onto the outer cases.”
The CleanCode EV1 is said to be significantly less expensive than CIJ machines and has much lower running costs that either CIJ or DOD printers, yet it also provides highly legible and fully formed characters with a resolution of 300dpi. The unit uses Hewlett Packard TIJ technology and can print a one-line message in 12.5mm characters or two lines with 5.5mm high characters. Size selection is done via the front key on the hand held controller and the standard message length is one line of 24 characters or 48 characters in two lines of 24.
Four software options are available, which convert the machine from a simple system to one comparable with higher priced, high-resolution coders. The software is supplied on Data Flash Cards and can be easily installed in situ.
