Sept. 2002—Imagine having your face printed on all your golf balls. Or your child’s first Christmas immortalized on an ornament to hang on the tree every year. You could even put your boss’s picture on that stress ball you squeeze all day.

Putting images on round, or spherical, objects is not a new concept. Golf ball companies print their logos on their products, and there are places to get custom ornaments created. But truly custom printing on these objects has always been time consuming and costly. A new company called Designer Image Technologies Inc. (DIT) has created a machine that uses inkjet technology to print on spheres that is designed to make short-run custom printing a viable option, with both the time and cost to print the materials cut by substantial amounts.

Even with all the advances in digital technology, spherical printing has continued to work in the same old-fashioned way: screen printing or pad printing.

Pad printing is the most popular way of printing on spherical objects. There are several different types of pad printing: inkwell, sealed ink cup or gravure. In inkwell, the ink is spread onto the plate with the excess ink then scraped off. A pad (these can vary in hardness depending on the project) is pressed down on the plate to soak up the ink. The pad is then pushed down onto the object to create the image.

The second method, sealed ink cup, works essentially the same way, the only difference is in how the ink is applied - in this process the ink cup moves across the plate applying the ink, with a small lip on the end to collect the excess material.

Rotary gravure pad printing uses a drum instead of a plate. The drum rolls through the ink and then passes the image on to a second roller. The object that is being printed meets the roller and takes the image. Of the three, this method is the most conductive to higher-speed printing.

All of these methods involve contact with the object. Because the objects are round instead of flat, the likelihood of misregistration or smearing increases. At the same time, it should be noted that a new inkjet technology is unlikely to replace large-scale print runs of spherical objects using these proven techniques. DIT’s inkjet process is designed for runs of a few dozen at a time.

Next Generation
DIT has developed a new process using inkjet technology and a no-touch method that allows an image to be printed across the entire surface of the sphere - 360 degrees around.

The machine, called the Balljet, took a year to build and was first demonstrated in the Sun Chemical booth at the IPEX trade show in Birmingham, U.K., this spring. The project began in 1988 when DIT founder Alan Over looked into custom golf balls and found that there was no technology available for short-run, individualized printing. Ten years later he decided to go back to that thought and researched inkjet technology and non-porous inks. He looked into having a custom machine and software designed and built, but found the process too expensive. In the end he hired his own team of developers, found partners to help finance the venture and created the Balljet machine and Spherical Image Developer (SID) software.

"We selected the industrial inkjet head for a couple reasons," said Over. "We went specifically with Xaar technology because they had a defined roadmap and they had the ability with their inkjet head to print prime resolutions. So we designed around their technology and the reason we went with industrial inkjet was the durability of the head technology, the low cost of printing, the non-contact printing and a couple other advantages for going inkjet."

SID is a proprietary software program that also acts as a RIP for the Balljet. It allows users to create images and text or import them from programs such as Adobe Photoshop and see how they will look on a spherical object. A virtual sphere can be rotated 360 degrees to view the entire printing surface and make changes as necessary.

The Balljet can be configured for anywhere between one and seven colors. UV inks are used for applications such as golf balls and glass cups, while solvent inks are used for objects such as Christmas ornaments. Other types of inks, such as dye-based or oil-based, can be used depending on the type of object that will be printed on. DIT will work with a manufacturer to determine the type of ink that will work best with the type of balls they are going to print.

Custom Business
DIT will customize each machine according to the needs of its customers - varying such features as the number of inks used or a light curtain that shuts down the machine if something, such as an arm or a finger, passes through it. Another feature that can be added on is a digital camera that will compare the finished product with a database image of what the object is supposed to look like. Those objects that match are sent to finishing, while those that do not are sent elsewhere.

"It’s almost like a car - you may want leather seats, you may want to have electric windows or manual locks. We start out with a foundation, much like a basic car, and the manufacturer will specify what features they need to have on the machine," said Over.

The first machine was installed at Wilson Sporting Goods Co., which plans to produce custom golf balls. DIT is also currently in talks with other golf ball makers, promotional printers and ornament printers.

Balljet can output around 5.5 golf ball-sized objects per minute. Other objects than can be printed on include Easter eggs, wine goblets or glass cups for restaurants. The machine is automated, requiring only one operator, which makes it feasible to do short-run, highly personalized versions of these objects. Over hopes to target engravers, custom gift retailers, portrait studios and has even thought about kiosks in malls.

The smallest object that can be printed on is ping-pong ball sized. The limit on how large the object to be printed on can get is dependant on the size of the inkjet head that the manufacturer specifies.

Holiday Fare
"An industry that will see a significant cost reduction will be the Christmas ornament industry," said Over. "They currently have a 100-piece minimum because of the time and labor required. The ornament actually has a glass stem on it and after they get done printing they take that object into another area and they cut that stem off. They leave the stem on there during the printing process because it is a contact printing process and that stem adds strength to the object. When they get done printing, they cut what they call the moil off of the object. A percentage of the objects at that point will fracture, and therefore you have printed on an ornament that cannot be shipped to a customer, so they have to discard it. Inkjet printing allows them to cut that moil off and cap that ornament and confirm its integrity before they print the first information on the object. Anything that they print they theoretically can ship with this process."

The cost of a Balljet system varies dramatically, from $38,000 to as much as $400,000. There are four models of the system: a single-station machine, a two-station machine, a four-station machine and a five-station machine. In each of those models there are around four levels of standard configurations, with some having UV-curing capability or automation for instance.

DIT hopes to create a revolution in the spherical printing world. The day is fast approaching when you will be able to order a dozen golf balls with your own picture on them or create a single Christmas ornament in the mall instead of a t-shirt. Or even put the picture of the boss from the last company picnic on that stress ball you love to squeeze.