Mouvent, a new company founded by a joint venture between Bobst and Radex and focused exclusively on digital print technology, has revealed the details behind behind its range of new digital printers. The Mouvent Cluster is a radical new approach, the company says, as it uses clusters instead of fixed size print bars by color, arranging them in a modular, scalable matrix. The result is one system that can be simply adapted for all substrates, of all widths, for all markets.

“This is game-changing technology,” states Piero Pierantozzi, co-founder of Mouvent. “Until now, printing systems have been tailor-made to the requirements of each industry. The cluster technology is completely flexible and can be adapted and used for any market and any substrate. We believe this will completely revolutionize digital printing, making it more accessible, more flexible, cheaper and simpler, while maintaining the highest quality standards.”

The cluster technology was developed by Radex, a start-up company owned by multiple stakeholders with a long track record in the field of DoD inkjet digital printing. Radex and Bobst started Mouvent as a joint venture in June 2017. The cluster technology is the centerpiece of the new machines developed by Mouvent for a wide variety of markets such as textile, labels, corrugated board, flexible packaging, folding carton and more.

High flexibility, high quality, low cost
Mouvent has already revealed some of its machines including the 8-color digital textile printing machine TX801. It is associated with the highest print resolution of up to 2000 dpi and the highest productivity in the market with an output of up to 200 sqm/h, at the lowest cost per square meter produced. In multi-pass machines like the TX801, the cluster moves across the up-to-1800 mm wide substrate at 100 m/min and can apply up to 16 g/sqm of ink, with one color per print head and up to 8 colors per cluster.

Mouvent has also announced its first range of label printing solutions, which include two all-new, high speed 7-color UV ink printers (LB701-UV and LB702-UV) and a water-based ink digital inkjet label printer in the narrow web segment. With single-pass machines like these, the substrate is running through at up to 100m/min below the fixed clusters, at one color per cluster.

Each Mouvent Cluster prints up to 170 mm wide. Additional clusters can be added (so two clusters is 340 mm wide and so on) in theory without any limit. Therefore, whatever the substrate width, the technology can be adapted accordingly. With 10,000 operating hours, the life cycle of the cluster is extremely long. What’s more, they are very light in weight, at around 1.8kg, and can be easily replaced.

Beyond their digital printing presses, Mouvent offers a fully integrated, complete solution – it develops, engineers, tests, and industrializes digital printers based on the Mouvent Cluster, it writes the software around the printers, develops inks and coatings for various substrates, as well as providing a full servicing offering. The company is promising a new standard in inkjet label production cost and quality, in ink pricing, head durability, quality and machine performance.

“By using the same clusters, the same software, the same spare parts and the same ink systems for all machines, we can design them as simple and compact as possible while keeping operating costs for our customers at a minimum and predictable,” says Pierantozzi. “Simplicity is our engineering philosophy.”

Mouvent will be showcasing its innovative cluster technology in a range of digital label presses on its booth (Hall 3 / A60) at this year’s Labelexpo in Brussels, September 25-28.