CIJ Printing Upgrade Underway at Yuengling

Continuous ink-jet printing has undergone some serious upgrading at the Mill Creek, Pa., facility of Pottsville, Pa.-based D.G. Yuengling & Son, America’s oldest brewery.

It started about two years ago when an older ink-jet printer was replaced with a BestCode Series 8 CIJ printer for date coding on the bottom of aluminum cans. Scott Staudenmeier, packaging supervisor at Yuengling, explains.

“We run a 12-, a 16-, and a 24-oz can. They all share a common depalletizer and overhead conveyor, but each size branches off to its own twist-rinse conveyor. So right at that point where they diverge we needed to be able to move the print head to any one of three locations. Thanks to an extra-long umbilical cord provided by BestCode, in addition to three print head brackets each a short distance apart, it’s no problem.” 

Two more BestCode ink-jet printers were installed last year on a keg line, one that prints on the top of each keg and another for printing on the side. They replace an aging dual-head printer that had one controller and one ink system. Two new CIJ printers are used on a keg line, one for printing on the top of each keg and the other for printing on the side.Courtesy of YuenglingAccording to Brett Schuetz, director of operations, when he and his team crunched the numbers, the cost of two BestCode Series 8 units came in lower than a single dual-head printer. He notes that there is an additional benefit that comes with these two new printers. “If you were to have a failure on one unit, you still have another that is able to deliver a code,” he says. “So not only was the upfront cost lower than a single dual-head unit, we get some welcome redundancy on the line.”

The ink used on these two units is designed to wash off in a caustic wash since the kegs are reused numerous times. One notable bit of customization that BestCode brought to these two CIJ printers was to link them through software so that there’s only one operator interface. “One of our concerns was that with two units, there is a possibility of the codes differing for some unforeseen reason” says Schuetz. “This solution links the two in kind of a master/slave relationship so that data entered into one is automatically transferred over to the other.”

CIJ replaces laser

The newest BestCode printer at Yuengling, installed by the brewer this past March, is mounted on the discharge of a Graphic Packaging International cartoner used for 12-count cartons of bottles. Unlike the other three upgrades, where Ink-jet replaced ink-jet, the newest printer replaced a laser coder. “The laser printer we’d been using was about 10 years old, and as we looked at whether we should repair or replace it, we did a cost/benefit analysis that showed the total cost of ownership was decidedly favorable if we replaced it with a BestCode  continuous ink-jet,” says Schuetz.

BestCode’s Andy Fox estimates that over a five-year span, the BestCode Series 8 CIJ printer offers a cost advantage of more than $12,000 compared to a 30W CO₂ laser system. He also notes that, unlike laser printers, CIJ works on porous as well as non-porous substrates, it requires no special guarding, it’s easily moved, and it’s field-serviceable.

Just as important as all of that, says Yuengling’s Staudenmeier, the day-in-day-out operation of this newest CIJ printer—just like the three that preceded it--has been smooth and predictable. “They’re very easy to work with,” he notes. “And even if we do encounter a fault, there’s a QR code we can scan to be taken to a video that takes us step by step to a solution.” PW