Introduced at the PACK EXPO International booth of Squid Ink was an innovative combination of capabilities: the CoPilot Max Turbo high-resolution printing system integrated with the VCTS (Vertical Case Transport System) from Squid Ink sister company Eastey. Flat corrugated cases blanks are transported from a magazine through the CoPilot Max for printing and then collected in a collection hopper.

“This is a perfect system for printing the adjacent sides or all four sides of cases right in the customer plant,” said Jay Sinclair, director of sales eastern region at Engage Technologies/Squid Ink Manufacturing. “The hopper holds up to 80 cases, and we can do up to 60 cases/min. This lets customers buy blank corrugated cases and, instead of applying labels to them, they can customize the printing and do on-demand case printing with production runs on the fly.”

The CoPilot Max Turbo printing system is designed to print top quality characters on porous or nonporous surfaces. For applications that require immediate dry times on nonporous surfaces, the printer also is able to run UV LED curable inks. With up to 2.8 in. of print height per printhead and the ability to run up to two printheads from one controller, the CoPilot Max Turbo offers a versatile yet cost effective solution for coding and marking. And with Squid Ink’s unique active ink system, users can tilt or rotate the printhead in any direction without making height adjustments to the ink supply. The system prints high-resolution characters, razor-sharp text, scannable bar codes, or logos at up to 360 dpi.