This year, Rotech Machines, the coding integration and feeding systems specialist, celebrates its 20th anniversary. To mark this milestone, company director Richard Pether looks back through the decades on coding technologies and what is instore for the future.
The birth of the continuous inkjet printer stretches back to the late 1970s and early 1980s, when companies like Domino, Videojet and Linx embarked on the industrial implementation of continuous inkjet (CIJ) technology.
Their development efforts were given a significant boost in 1980, when the EEC directive to label perishable goods with a sell-by date came into force, rapidly expanding the market for inkjet printers.
In their R&D, the engineers of these early printers were striving to develop systems with totally sealed printheads, single button start and stop and the ability to print up to several lines of text – principles that still hold true today.
