The Durst Rho 1012 with Variodrop technology first shown at SGIA in Florida

The Rho 1012 is the most productive 12 picolitre inkjet in its class. It is capable of printing with a resolution of 1000 DPI at speeds up to 490m². Now, with the addition of Durst’s own Variodrop technology, enhancements to the image quality means that it is capable of excellent results at even faster printing modes.

Since its introduction, the Rho 1012 has set the quality standard for high end industrial productivity and, with the inclusion of Variodrop technology, solid areas are even smoother. In addition, Variodrop overcomes some of the errors which can occur with greyscale printing alone. In particular, greyscale relies very strongly on accuracy of drop placement and this can be affected by the uniformity of velocity of drops. Any variations of the printheads’ working conditions could lead to a mismatch of different greyscale level drop velocities and the consequence is drop placement inaccuracy.

The Variodrop on the Rho 1012 changes the drop size from 12 to 20 picolitres and even at the larger drop size, solid colours are smoother and have an improved colour gamut. Variodrop is an adjustable binary mode which uses multipulsing for drop size modulation. It combines two voltage pulses in such a way that the second pulse pumps precise dosage amounts of ink into the droplet before it detaches from the nozzle plate without forming any satellites. Compared to the often uneven droplets formed from a not well tuned greyscale waveform, the double pulse drop shape is perfectly uniform and its placement is always evenly spaced with Variodrop.

Like other Durst inkjet printers, the Rho 1012 is upgradable in the field. This means that the new Variodrop technology can be added to existing customers’ printers.

The Rho 1012 has a host of features such as left and right registration which enables parallel printing of boards side by side and mechanical 2 point pin registration for perfect front and reverse side printing. Printing options include fast media change from rigid to roll and options for roll to sheet or roll to roll printing and ink options which include light colours and Process Colour Addition (PCA).

With Variodrop technology, the Rho 1012 will continue to set the benchmark for large format quality and productivity for some time to come.