by Melissa Donovan
Digital printing offers advantages like flexibility in terms of what is printed and how many pieces. This is ideal for aluminum cans, which are used for many reasons from beverages to cleaning supplies. Manufacturers of these products are always looking for ways to cost-effectively decorate limited editions or seasonal items.
The November issue of Industrial Print magazine looks at direct digital printing to aluminum cans. Here we share OEMs offering printers ideal for this practice.
The DPI Laboratory offers the Catalyst Nanos and Catalyst Aventra printers. Both come with a rotary system included, which is ideal for embellishing aluminum cans and bottles, or really any cylindrical object that will fit under the printhead.
Inkcups’ Helix digital cylinder printer is designed to print superior quality full-color images on straight-walled and tapered cylinders, including aluminum cans. Fast and flexible, this cylinder printing machine is ideal for use in the drinkware, barware, candle, and industrial printing industries. The Helix UV cylindrical printer strikes an ideal balance between speed and image quality thanks to its patented Helix software, which places seven picoliter drops of ink precisely along the cylinder at extremely high speed. Inkcups’ S1 UV inkjet ink series is the ink of choice.
Innovative Digital Systems’ line of rotary printers can digitally print a standard aluminum can at varying production speeds to support short- to medium-length production runs. These include the Rev360, TwinRev, and QuadRev machines. It also offers the Twobee printer for printing aluminum tubes for retail cosmetics packaging.
LSINC offers the Perivallo360m, an advanced direct-to-object printer engineered for exceptional performance on cylindrical, conical, and irregularly contoured substrates including metals like aluminum and applications like aerosol cans. The printer uses Ricoh piezoelectric printheads and LSINC’s proprietary technology to follow the contours of an object printing from top to bottom with seamless 360 degree helical printing technology.
Koenig & Bauer Kammann’s line of printers allows decoration of aluminum containers with a diameter of up to 120 millimeters and a length of up to 450 millimeters. The maximum print image height is 220 millimeters. The K4 DP is the company’s first system based entirely on digital printing, others in the product family can be configured for digital print, screen print, hot stamping, and labeling—all in one device.
Quantix Digital of Italy offers an advanced direct to object high-speed digital inkjet printing system for precision decorating of 3D round cylinders and tapered objects with photo-quality graphics. The fully servo-driven Novum Can model is modular and scalable, supporting digital printing on various types of containers. The printer is equipped with plasma pretreatment and UV-cured primers. The printer is distributed in the U.S. by Deco Technology Group.
The Velox IDS family is the next generation of industrial decoration systems. Based on its dual-pillar technology of system architecture and inks, coupled with first-class technical support, it delivers superior quality, high speed, and low total cost of ownership, while improving the sustainability of packaging decoration. For example, the Velox IDS-BC series is an industrial-level, direct-to-shape digital decoration solution for high-volume production of straight wall beverage cans that uses Velox UV ink.
Nov2025, Industrial Print Magazine
