In Greater Poland, on the outskirts of Odolanów, an installation has been running for decades that exists nowhere else in the European Union. It recovers helium from natural gas – an element without which European chip production doesn’t work, MRI magnets don’t cool down, and precision components, from airbag initiators and fuel systems to refrigeration installations and heat pumps, don’t pass standard leak tests. Helium is associated with birthday balloons, but above all it is a critical raw material for which there is currently no economically viable substitute in the most advanced processes. 

The complex in Odolanów is the result of a decision not to outsource a critical competency – a decision that is more expensive in the short term, harder to organize, and only pays off once the market stops being predictable. The same logic – on a completely different scale and in a completely different industry – applies to the production of membrane keyboards.  

Printing on a membrane keyboard is not a matter of aesthetics 

In a brochure, every panel looks good. On the customer’s production floor, after a year of use, what was actually printed becomes clear. 

Printing on foil operates under conditions in which standard printing would never even be considered. It has to survive: 

• millions of mechanical cycles – without abrasion and without loss of contrast at points of heaviest use,  

• contact with cleaning and disinfecting agents – alcohols, detergents, solvents used in industry and medicine,  

• UV radiation – which over years can weaken pigment and discolor the surface,  

• variable humidity and temperature – without the layer cracking and without losing adhesion to the foil,  

• dimensional precision at the level of tenths of a millimeter – because the print must land in specific active areas beneath the conductive layer.  

Every one of these parameters is an engineering matter. And every one of them is decided at the stage of selecting the ink itself. 

Screen printing and digital printing – two different economics of quality 

Screen printing is the standard in the membrane keyboard market. A mature, proven technology, cost-effective for long runs and well known to every experienced manufacturer. It has its own logic: a screen is prepared, parameters are set for the run, and then the same process is repeated thousands of times. It works. 

Digital printing works differently. It uses piezoelectric print heads in “drop-on-demand” mode – a drop of ink is formed exactly where it needs to be, without a screen as an intermediary. There’s no need to prepare a form, you can switch from one design to another without losing time, and you can personalize every single unit. 

It comes down to a choice between two ways of working with the customer. Screen printing rewards scale and the repeatability of large runs. Digital printing rewards flexibility – short runs, prototypes, language versions, functional variants, fast iterations. The price of a single print can be higher. The price of the whole project is usually lower, because the cost of screens and the time needed to prepare them disappears. 

The difference lies in what needs to be controlled. In screen printing, a properly tensioned screen decides the outcome – along with a properly selected screen printing ink. In digital printing, the ink decides – along with how it interacts with a specific print head and a specific substrate. 

Ink as a structural component, not a finish 

Ink for digital printing on membrane keyboards has to meet several conflicting requirements at once. It has to have a viscosity matched to the print head – too thick and it clogs the nozzles, too thin and it spreads across the substrate and ruins precision. It has to adhere to a specific foil – one for polycarbonate (PC), another for polyester (PET), another still for variants with a hard-coat finish or texture. It has to hold its color through years of UV exposure. It has to withstand friction, pressure, and cleaning, all without chemically interfering with the layers underneath. 

Buying ready-made inks on the market means designing around the supplier’s limitations. You get the colors that are in stock. The resistance levels guaranteed by the technical data sheet. The viscosity that comes out of the factory. If the customer needs something different, the answer is often “unfortunately, we don’t have that.” 

In-house ink production means designing from the other direction: from the customer’s requirement to the chemical formula. A custom color matching the corporate palette. Increased resistance to a specific solvent used at the customer’s plant. Printing on a substrate that manufacturers of ready-made inks never anticipated. These aren’t exceptional situations – they are the everyday reality of OEM orders in the machinery, medical, and transport industries. 

In a brochure, every ink looks the same. Production reality quickly puts that equality to the test. 

What connects the helium installation with ink production? 

At first glance, nothing connects them. The installation in Odolanów processes natural gas on an industrial scale and recovers from it the element on which the operation of the world’s most advanced technologies depends. The digital printing line in Łódź produces inks for keyboards fitted into production machinery, medical devices, and vehicles. 

The difference in scale is obvious, but the mechanism is identical. 

In both cases, the starting point is the same decision: don’t outsource a critical competency. In Odolanów, that’s helium – a raw material that cannot be economically replaced in chip production, MRI equipment, or leak testing. In Łódź, it’s the ink formula – a component that determines the repeatability, durability, and ability to adapt printing to non-standard requirements. 

In both cases, the decision is more expensive in the short term. Infrastructure has to be maintained, along with people’s expertise and quality control at every stage. Outsourcing would be cheaper – right up until the market stops being predictable. And recent years have shown that such moments come more often than continuity plans assumed. 

Disruptions to global helium supplies, pigment price fluctuations, interrupted logistics chains, sanctions, and political conflicts – these are not emergency scenarios. They are the constant backdrop against which European industry operates. Companies that control their own value chain against this backdrop are not hostages to other people’s decisions and other people’s crises. That’s the whole advantage of being “one of a kind.” 

Technological independence as part of the design 

The term “technological independence” is easy to blur in marketing. In practice, it means a few very concrete operational capabilities. 

The first capability – responsiveness. When a customer reports a non-standard requirement, the response doesn’t depend on an external supplier’s schedule. Changing a shade, modifying chemical resistance, printing on an off-standard material – the decision on feasibility is made within our own plant. 

The second capability – iteration. A prototype can be made in a few days, not weeks. A fix identified after testing can be implemented immediately, rather than after the next raw material order cycle. 

The third capability – accountability. When ink, foil, and printing are all under one technical control, a single company is responsible for the final parameter. The customer doesn’t have to ask three suppliers where the source of the problem lies. 

How does this look at Qwerty? 

At Qwerty, we see in-house ink production as part of the system, not a separate technology line. At the start of a keyboard project, we don’t begin by picking from an ink catalog. We start with a conversation about where the panel will operate, how often it will be cleaned, what agents are used at the customer’s plant, and what durability the specification requires. 

Only on that basis is the formula selected – viscosity matched to a specific print head, pigments resistant to the expected loads, a formula compatible with the front layer. In the project, we analyze: 

• the chemical environment and cleaning regime,  

• UV exposure and variable temperatures,  

• the required number of cycles and the nature of the operator’s work,  

• custom colors and the customer’s visual identity,  

• print compatibility with the conductive circuit layer and lamination.  

As a result, decisions that are a limitation for many manufacturers – “we can’t do that, the supplier didn’t anticipate it” – are, for us, the starting point of a technical conversation. 

Uniqueness is not an advertising slogan 

Uniqueness is the result of difficult, costly, long-term technological decisions that the market only notices once something fails elsewhere. In Odolanów, that decision was building and maintaining the only helium recovery installation in the European Union. In Łódź, it’s maintaining in-house ink production in an industry where most manufacturers have bought it in from outside for years. 

Good inks, like a good keyboard, work in the background of the process. They don’t draw attention to themselves as long as they do their job. And that’s exactly why the formula is a decision we prefer to make ourselves.