# digital printing Topic radar · 14,351 documents · 2021-01-01–2026-11-11 · updated 2026-11-10 Canonical: https://slate.greyb.com/radar/digital-printing/innovations ## In one minute ### Six areas, one problem, and the problem is the surface Strip the area labels off and this is one task repeated on different materials. A head has to put a metered volume of liquid at a stated position on something that does not want to hold it, and each area is defined by why the surface resists. On plastic the surface energy is too low, so the process starts by cleaning the part, drying it below 0.1 percent moisture and activating it with plasma, corona or flame before a drop is jetted [1]. On glass the droplet arrives thin, at 8 to 20 mPa·s (a measure of how freely it flows), and has to thicken past 100 mPa·s within moments of landing so it stops spreading across a non-absorbing sheet [2]. On fabric the substrate moves and stretches while it is being printed, so the image has to be pre-distorted against a predicted deformation [3]. On food packaging the difficulty is what the cured film leaves behind, which is why the ink families push monofunctional monomer content below five percent and make the photoinitiators polymeric so they cannot migrate [4]. That ordering explains who holds the defensible work. The deepest single position in Packaging and Labels belongs to an ink house working through migration and cure rather than to a press builder [4], and in Industrial and Manufactured Goods the machine claims are geometry that competitors can design around while the cure chemistry is where the constraint sits. The physics of the interface outranks the engineering of the frame. 1. [CN121571348A](/?paper=CN121571348A&utm_source=radar&utm_medium=dashboard) 2. [US11993723B2](/?paper=US11993723B2&utm_source=radar&utm_medium=dashboard) 3. [CN120451237B](/?paper=CN120451237B&utm_source=radar&utm_medium=dashboard) 4. [GB2609555B](/?paper=GB2609555B&utm_source=radar&utm_medium=dashboard) ### The companies that build the presses are combining faster than the presses are selling Three of the largest independent commercial platforms changed hands or structure in eighteen months, and none of the three was a new press. ### Filing has recovered to its highest since 2022 while published research has halved 2026 has produced 2,184 patent publications by 10 November, above every full year from 2023 to 2025 and below only 2021 and 2022, with two months still uncounted. Papers went the other way: 118 so far against 203 in 2024, 207 in 2023 and 169 in the whole of 2025. ### A measuring loop is replacing the mechanism The consistent move across the radar is that a machine no longer earns its specification from the rigidity of its parts. It earns it from what it measures and how quickly it acts on the measurement. ### The orders that exist go to a short list of accounts, and the unit sales happen at entry level The large commitments are few and named. HP extended its agreement with RR Donnelley to fifteen presses running through 2029. Fujifilm made its water-based flexible packaging press the centre of a global alliance with ePac. Konica Minolta replaced an installed base it puts above 350 units with the AccurioJet 30000. ### Three areas are already past last year's total, and the largest is flat The partial year makes comparisons awkward, and three areas have still beaten their whole-2025 count in ten months. 3D and Decorative Printing went from 68 documents in 2025 to 94 by 10 November, Industrial and Manufactured Goods from 240 to 269, and Textiles and Apparel from 335 to 359. Electronics and Displays went from 136 to 146 and Packaging and Labels is level at 111. ### The newest loops predict the outcome before the ink lands The correction layer has moved from reacting to a defect to simulating the machine that would produce it. Three filings from three countries describe the same architecture. ### Launches cluster where digital has the least of the market, and the areas it already owns are quiet Set the launch record against how much of each substrate is already printed digitally, and the pattern inverts. ## Overview Across all six areas the same trade is happening. A press used to earn its specification from how rigidly it was built. It now earns it from what it measures, what its ink does once it lands, and which external standard it can prove it meets. ## Research ### Where the loop cannot reach, the answer is fluid chemistry Several of the field's hardest failures are not control problems and no amount of scheduling fixes them. ### The printhead has quietly become the instrument The metrology that used to sit beside the machine is moving inside it, which changes what a press can be sold on. ### The loop is documented and its output is not Nothing in the record measures whether compensated printing passes a customer's specification, or how much yield the correction recovers. The capability is well evidenced and the result is not. ## Market ### Every headline market size is a forecast, and they disagree by a factor of four The numbers quoted for the whole field range from 36 billion dollars for 2025 to 167.5 billion, a gap that is definitional: one counts equipment, ink and print revenue together and the other does not. Packaging alone is put at 23.4 billion dollars in 2025 rising to 59.3 by 2036 at 8.8 percent. ### Regulation has become the buying reason in two areas at once, and both deadlines are dated In textiles the European Digital Product Passport is expected around 2027, with obligations applying after an 18 to 24 month transition, which puts enforcement in the late 2028 to 2029 window. In containers, extended producer responsibility rules are being cited as the momentum behind label-free direct-to-shape decoration. On the industrial side, proposed volatile organic compound limits in one US air district would land hardest on the solvent ink family with the strongest patent position. ### The market the field is counting on next has filings and almost no orders The two areas with the heaviest technical activity have the thinnest commercial record. Printed OLED has a shipping product and committed capacity, and Omdia's case for it rests on a 30 to 35 percent cost reduction modelled on notebook panels. The organisations joining that area most recently print solar cells and battery components rather than displays. ## Strategy ### The new filers make solar cells and batteries The organisations that joined Electronics and Displays in the last twelve months are largely not display companies. Aiko Solar runs an ink-flow control method for its printheads and a sealed perovskite printing line. GCL System Integration closes a camera loop on droplet volume and adjusts voltage, chamber temperature or humidity as the film forms. Royal Electronic applies a 1200 dpi head to a full perovskite stack and calibrates each nozzle's voltage channel against its own deviation. Chunhuo sells the same shift as a replacement for slot coating, Qihang uses an inkjet mask to etch TOPCon back contacts, and Elvis builds the cell printer as a conveyor with curing and nozzle recovery on it. ### Chinese volume is off its 2022 peak and American publication is up by half China supplied 1,574 patent publications in 2022 and 1,279 in the ten months to 10 November 2026, already within two percent of the whole of 2025. The United States went from 192 in 2021 to 289, its highest year in the window. Japan fell from 318 to 236. ### Software houses now file more than the press builders Two organisations file almost nothing but print workflow, and both outrank Canon. Hanson Software holds 170 documents and Hosonsoft 163, against Canon at 151 and Mimaki at 142. Ideal Science Industry, another workflow filer, holds 156. ### Ink houses concentrate, press builders spread Fujifilm Speciality Ink Systems holds 75 documents and 18 of them are on a single problem, inkjet ink for food packaging, worked through migration, odour and cure speed at fixed low viscosity. Sakata Inx holds 122 and 76 of them inside Industrial and Manufactured Goods, where it leads the area ahead of Fujifilm Speciality Ink Systems and Konica Minolta at 45 each, Agfa at 32, Epson at 30 and Mimaki at 29. ### The display area has converted from a research subject into a manufacturing one Papers in Electronics and Displays fell from 89 in 2023 to 50 in 2025 and 34 to 10 November 2026, while patents in the area reached 112 in the same ten months, the strongest patent year in the window. Academics are leaving the field faster than industry is entering it: education-affiliated papers across the whole radar fell from 140 in 2023 to 78, and facility-affiliated papers from 33 in 2021 to 11. ## Areas - Commercial and Graphic Arts · 8,442 documents - Textiles and Apparel · 2,126 documents - Industrial and Manufactured Goods · 1,482 documents - Electronics and Displays · 884 documents - Packaging and Labels · 659 documents - 3D and Decorative Printing · 483 documents