The high-speed UV inkjet press, AccurioJet 60000, is explained to be capable of producing 6000 sheets per hour along with duplex printing capabilities. The press produces high image quality and reproduction stability across a range of media, taking advantage of Konica Minolta’s inline sensors and a spectrophotometer to automatically monitor printing conditions.

Visitors to Konica Minolta at drupa will also be the first to see the AccurioPress C84hc, which uses high chroma toner. Free from the restrictions imposed by the colour gamut of ordinary toner, prints are said to be more consistent across bright and vivid colours.

The company will also introduce Myiro colour management tools for graphics arts applications. Developed by Konica Minolta’s Sensing Business Unit, these tools include spectrophotometers for colour management and high-speed auto scanning.

Konica will be joined on the stand by MGI (MGI Digital Printing Systems) showing its new JetSeal and inline die cutter, as well as launching an advanced version of its AccurioPro Colour Manager software suite.

Also joining Konica Minolta will be Industrial Inkjet (IIJ), a specialist in bespoke inkjet customisation, which exclusively uses Konica Minolta print heads in its products; and Plockmatic, a supplier of finishing options, as well as Acco and Fiery.

Konica Minolta will also be running fully automated production lines driven by artificial intelligence, and will show the use of robotics that includes the premiere of a Cobot arm.

Jon Hiscock, head of production and industrial print at Konica Minolta (UK), stated, ‘As a major player in digital production printing it is our mission to promote and support the shift from analogue to digital print. In doing so, we will build a world where high-value-added printed materials are created efficiently with minimal environmental impact.’

The post Konica to premiere new technology at drupa 2024 appeared first on Digital Printer.

What’s now called embellishment or special effects used to be a group of purely post-press operations. These included lamination, spot or flood varnishing and foiling (hot or cold). Other eye-catching things have always had to be done in or on the press – if you wanted metallic colours you had to use a special ink or print on a metallised substrate; the same applied for fluorescent or other special colours.

Digital print has blurred those boundaries, bringing a number of ways of achieving the same or ‘close enough’ effects, combined with the flexibility and minimal set-up requirements characteristic of digital print. These also split into in-press effects and subsequently-applied effects.

Before looking at these in detail, it’s also worth noting that a sustainability argument is emerging for digital embellishment as an alternative to more conventional processes. This comes from Scodix, which makes stand-alone ‘embellishment presses’ (distributed in the UK by Friedheim) that can apply a wide range of decorative effects to printed sheets, with full digital flexibility in each.

Scodix carried out a lifecycle assessment of its digital foiling options which found that compared to conventional hot stamp foiling, its version reduces CO2e (CO2 equivalent) by 85%, fossil fuel usage by nearly 85%, and water consumption by 80% per B1 sheet. The study, carried out by EcamRicert, and Mérieux NutriSciences Companies, compared the enhancement of a single B1 sheet through to 100,000 B1 sheets using Scodix foil (175g) versus traditional foiling methods.

That’s only one of the options that Scodix offers and there’s no indication given that any of the other supported techniques offer comparable advantages. However, like any other form of digital printing, it seems likely that overall wastage of materials and energy is likely to be lower simply through the ability to only print or finish the number required.

The main argument in favour of these types of effects though is that they add impact to printed products and therefore margin to your work. Some you can only do if you bought the right press, though they could also be a factor in choosing a new one. There’s an increasing number of toner presses that offer additional colours which may include clear ‘varnish’, white, fluorescent and metallic colours, though usually only one or sometimes two at a time.

Plus-one – or more

Machines that offer a fifth colour include Xerox’s iGen line and Ricoh’s Pro C7200, also sold by Heidelberg as the Versafire EV (and about to be replaced by the Pro C7500, though we’ve not seen any specification for this yet). Kodak’s Nexpress and Nexfinity models could do this too, with options over where in the laydown sequence the fifth colour went, though both are now discontinued. Moving up to six colours brings in the popular Xerox Iridesse, and the more recent Fujifilm Revoria, while most HP Indigos can handle up to seven colours, though of course click charges go up in proportion with all extra colour presses. Xerox also offers a conversion kit for two-pass printing on its entry-level PrimeLink C9065/C9070, which potentially allows the use of up to eight colours, albeit with a complete change of toner cartridges between passes.

The exact choice of extra colours varies by manufacturer, but in addition to white – for use on coloured or transparent substrates – and clear – used to create flood or spot varnish effects – fluorescent or ‘neon’ colours are offered, particularly pink and sometimes yellow. These can replace or be mixed with their standard CMYK equivalents to expand the colour gamut for more eye-catching effects. A few offer metallic toners too, which again can be printed solid or mixed to provide novel colours and finishes.

After the event

Post-press options are more about foiling, spot varnish and various creative lamination processes, often in combination. A good entry-level choice here is foil-over-toner, a two-pass method that uses ‘real’ foil in a laminator like Vivid’s Matrix models or those from Caslon, Foliant (sold via IFS), Komfi (from Friedheim) or Autobond. Similar options also come from GMP and Intec, now part of the Plockmatic group.

An entry-level option for foil-over-toner is Vivid’s Matrix, seen here at a trade show

In these, the initial colour print is first laminated with a clear film, then printed again with the foil pattern in black toner on top of the film, before a second pass through the laminator transfers the foil to the partially melted black toner. It’s a more labour-intensive process but it works with a very wide range of foil types and doesn’t require special consumables.

Then there are the fully ‘digital’ embellishment devices that offer spot UV and/or foiling in a single operation. This category includes devices like Duplo’s B2 DuSense 8000, which is offered in various configurations providing spot UV, digital foiling or both, including a pre-treatment option for expanding the types of print that can be handled. It’s also possible to build up textured ‘3D’ effects with multiple passes, which the smaller B3 DuSense 810 also supports. An alternative is the B3+ Konica Minolta AccurioShine 3600, which uses technology from MGI, in which Konica Minolta holds a significant stake. It too can produce ‘dimensional’ effects.

At the top end of the digital embellishment market are the ranges from Konica Minolta/MGI and Scodix. These are dedicated industrial production devices that offer UV varnish and foiling, with Scodix offering a particularly wide range of foils and finished effects, while MGI’s line goes up to B1 sheet size in the form of the print-and-embellish AlphaJet that was formally launched in October 2022. Kurz is another player at the industrial end of the scale, having bought Steinemann, whose inkjet varnish and foiling systems it was already marketing as Digital Metal. These include the sheet-fed B2 DM-Smartliner for 2D flat varnishing and foiling and the DM-Maxliner for raised and textured effects.

Whether you’re just ready to dip a toe into digital embellishment and cautious with the investment, or know that you’ve got a ready market for it but need to be sure it’s good enough and fast enough to meet your customers’ needs, there should be something to suit and help your work shine.

Preparing files for embellishment

All digital embellishment processes require ‘artwork’ to control where the effects are applied. Usually this means creating additional layers in the originating applications and/or print PDFs, though some vendors offer DFE-based tools to create embellishment guides or colour substitutions from standard PDFs on-the-fly.

Andrew Bailes-Collins of Ultimate Technographics, which makes imposition, nesting and ganging software, has written a handy guide to preparing generic PDFs that should process correctly through most embellishment vendors’ DFEs and thus avoid some of the common pitfalls that require manual reworking in the prepress studio.

Called PDF Creation for Digital Embellishment, it covers the use of spot colours, layers, knock-out and overprint and choice of correct versions of PDF for hand-off. It’s available free from Ultimate Technographics’ website.

The post Cause and effect appeared first on Digital Printer.

The term ‘embellishment’ can encompass inline printed effects such as metallic, pearlescent or fluorescent inks, or post-press processes such as raised and textured effects – sometimes called ‘tactile’ or ‘haptic’ – plus a wide variety of foiled effects that can range from mirror-bright metallics through diffraction and holographic effects, or just special colours.

A lot of the recent action has been over the Atlantic, but much of it is relevant to the UK and Europe. September saw the existing US based Foil & Specialty Effects Association (FSEA) announce the formation of the more focused Digital Embellishment Alliance (DEA), which it describes as a community to create educational and communication opportunities in the growing digital print embellishment segment.

This followed a three-day event in June in Minneapolis called Amplify Print, organised by the FSEA and APTech, which highlighted digital embellishment.

‘In the world of digital print embellishments, we see a market that is on the cusp of going mainstream but still suffers from an awareness issue at the brand and designer level,’ explained Gene Petrie, chair of the FSEA board of directors. ‘A key aim of the DEA is to help users and manufacturers educate their customers and increase understanding of how these digital embellishment technologies can help brands increase their print ROI.’ This year’s LabelExpo in Chicago, the first one to be held since the 2019 show in Brussels, featured a Digital Embellishment Trail for the first time, where stands featuring these effects were flagged up.

While the market for label embellishment is different to commercial printing and packaging, it’s also an indicator of which way the wind is blowing. It’s also worth mentioning Actega’s unique EcoLeaf filmless foiling technology, so far only for narrow web label presses, which applies metallic nanoflakes to a special inkjetted fluid to give a mirror-smooth metallic finish with no waste.

Inline on presses

Digital presses increasingly offer fifth and even sixth units that can take a variety of special toners, some to extend the colour gamut and some to add embellishments such as metallics, spot gloss or other effects. Kodak was the first to really make a go of this in 2008 with the fifth unit on its second-generation Nexpresses, which not only offered a wide range of special colours but could build up a raised ‘dimensional’ embossed effect with clear toner.

An example of the effects achievable with the combination
of digital spot UV and foiling on Duplo’s DuSense 8000

This has been continued with the latest Nexfinity models, whose fifth unit can produce 13 effects, including gold, silver, dimensional or gloss clear, and an opaque white. Xerox has also offered extra colours for years, most notably with its Iridesse model, which as the name suggests majors on its special effects abilities. Iridesse is still the only dry toner press to offer six colour stations, though HP Indigo liquid toner presses can have up to seven. Iridesse can run special toners in the first and sixth, or fifth and sixth positions – you might choose white in the first position as an undercoat on clear, dark or metallised substrates. Special toners can be white, clear (high or low gloss), fluorescent pink, gold or silver. The past few years have seen Xerox introduce add-on embellishment options as ‘Adaptive CMYK+’ kits for the mid-production Versants and the entry-level PrimeLink C9065/C9070.

These allow users to swap out the CMYK cartridges for a second embellishment pass. There’s a choice of ‘Vivid’ (silver, gold, white and clear, or fluorescent (cyan, magenta yellow, plus normal black). These can be fitted aftermarket if needed. Switching between toner sets takes 10 minutes or so, but Xerox Europe’s head of marketing Kevin O’Donnell says that it allows smaller printers to broaden their offerings and keep embellishment work inhouse. The high end iGen 6 has a fifth unit too, which gained a new fluorescent yellow toner option last year, alongside white, clear and some Pantone specials. Ricoh’s Pro C7200sx series toner presses have an inline fifth unit that can run white, clear, neon yellow, neon pink and ‘invisible’ security red.

White can run as the first colour if needed as an undercoat. HP Indigo digital presses are still unique in the way they can run up to seven colours with easy swapping. ‘Special’ inks include two white types, gloss and matt clear, silver, fluorescents (green, orange and pink), plus gamut[1]extending and tone-smoothing colours. Xeikon is developing a range of embellishment modules for its web toner presses that it calls Fusion; at LabelExpo it demonstrated an opaque white and silver printing on clear film. Foiling with laminators The post-press ‘sleeking’ market of foil embellishment via lightly modified thermal laminators makes a very attractive entry level for jobs where metal dies aren’t cost-effective. Several laminator suppliers promote this in the UK.

The results may not be as sharp as metal dies or the expensive inkjet foilers, but the entry costs are very low indeed, especially as the machines still work for conventional lamination, as with D&K’s range which foils up to B2. The Korean manufacturer GMP pioneered laminators with foiling facilities and sells three via GMP UK, a part of Gardiner Graphics. Intec Printing Systems – recently bought by Plockmatic and now sold alongside Morgana in the UK – bases its pair of ColorFlare foil laminators on GMP hardware: the CF350 costs £1999 and the CF1200 starts from £7999.

It also sells compatible foils, which were recently extended with a fashionable rose gold colour, plus copper and a useful opaque white. Vivid Lamination also offers a special Matrix Metallic version of its popular 420mm wide sheet-fed thermal laminator, for spot foils and gloss effects. This features modified rollers and a foil feeder. Other suppliers of laminator with foiling options include Autobond, Foliant (sold by IFS, using the retrofittable Multi-functional Imprinting Unit) and Komfi (sold by Friedheim). It was Caslon who pioneered the foil-onto-toner market in the 1980s, using dedicated heater-applicators rather than laminators. The company currently sells US-built FoilTech. machines, starting about £2000 for a 340mm wide manual feed model, up to a bit over £4000 for an auto-feed twin ribbon machine. A much more expensive but faster option is Kurz’s dedicated 4000sph B1 digital DM-Luxliner, which foils directly onto dry toner or HP Indigo prints.

Inkjets for ultimate effects

Inkjet-based embellishers have tended to get all the publicity ever since MGI announced JetVarnish, a digital spot UV varnisher, at drupa 2008 (though so did Komfi, but with less fanfare). At Ipex 2010 Scodix showed the first ‘high-build’ inkjet UV varnisher, with a raised and textured effect.

MGI soon followed with a high-build model called JetVarnish 3D. A few years later both worked out how to apply foil over the raised clear polymer. Scodix still offers more effects though, including faceted gems and Cast & Cure for high-end packaging. Scodix has gone through several generations and today has standardised on the Ultra 1000 series, with six models ranging in price from about £400,000 to £1.1 million. Most of them are B2 format, but with different front end configurations for commercial print, web-to-print and carton packaging.

Kurz offers high-end digital foiling options
supporting sheet sizes up to B1

There are two configurations for most applications. The base model uses a single polymer type, which VP global sales and marketing manager Mark Nixon says is suitable for ‘75% of all possible jobs.’ The other type has four polymer feeds, with different characteristics formulated between them to adhere to pretty well any substrate. The top model is the Ultra 6000, the only current B1 format offering, with a top speed of 1000sph. There was briefly a 4000sph B1 model, the E106, but the £2 million-plus price was too much for the market to bear. Mr Nixon says that users are happy with 1000 sph, as it compares favourably with high end analogue foiling systems that use metal dies and which can take hours to make ready. MGI today is in effect a subsidiary of Konica Minolta which as of October 202 held a 42.3% stake. KM sells the range worldwide, though not exclusively. Three models are B2 format, offering up to 4200sph, one is roll-to-roll on a 420mm web, and there is a long-A3 format model that was originally called JetVarnish 3D One, which was exclusive to KM even before it increased its shareholding in MGI.

This summer the MGI-badged One has been replaced by the Konica Minolta-branded AccurioShine 3600, which is apparently the same thing with a different colour scheme, though there may be technical differences we haven’t found out yet. MGI’s enormous B1 AlphaJet, which is now available after years of development and previews, can print full p The Konica Minolta-branded AccurioShine 3600 replaces the MGI JetVarnish 3D One colour and embellish with 3D polymer and foil inline at 1800sph. So far there’s only one user, ISRA, in France, announced this year. An official launch is due in October and will be reported in Digital Printer. At LabelExpo 2019, a prototype digital cutting and creasing unit was demonstrated that may find its way onto the AlphaJet too. Germany’s foil manufacturer Kurz recently acquired the Swiss Steinemann company, whose inkjet varnish and foiling systems it was already marketing as Digital Metal. These include the sheetfed B2 DM-Smartliner for 2D flat varnishing and overfoiling and the DM-Maxliner for raised and textured effects. There are also narrow web label models. Duplo’s B3 DuSense 810 is probably the entry level for 3D varnish effects.

Duplo is very resistant to giving prices, but the launch price in 2017 was reportedly £139,000. That’s a lot less than any of the current MGI or Scodix machines, though Konica Minolta’s AccurioShine 3600 may be in the same price league. DuSense can be fitted with optional inline foiling using the Bagel MiniLam lamination/foil unit. There is now also a B2 model, the DuSense 8000, launched in May 2022, which is offered in various configurations providing the spot UV, digital foiling or both, including a pre-treatment option for expanding the types of print that can be handled.

How to sell it

With embellishment systems becoming relatively common, at least as options, the challenge is now how to get the message out to the customers – designers, brands, even high street shops, who won’t order effects that they don’t realise exist. Xerox is well aware of this, says Kevin O’Donnell, and is making a big push to support help its users develop their markets for the embellishment options on their presses. Its Genesis Initiative is a multi-level set of free offerings that aim to build the market for what it calls ‘beyond CMYK.’ This includes helping printers to market embellishment effectively, and also to understand how to price it. There are also courses for designers to learn about embellishment, and how to use it and explain it to their customers too. Mr O’Donnell says ‘The key is not just the technology. More important is market engagement, and design skills. Every printer should be looking at the ‘plus’, over and above the norm. That’s not just embellishment, but anything you can do to stand out from the crowd, even if it’s just giving a box of doughnuts to new customers! ‘Embellishment might be priced for profitable value-added business, or it might equally be priced as a loss-leader to get new business,’ he says.

‘Some 90 – 95% of your business might always be CMYK, but if the embellishment brings in new customers, you’ve got a good chance of retaining them for future CMYK work.’ Another separate initiative is what’s probably the first consultancy intended specifically at helping creatives and producers get the best out of digital embellishment. Taktiful in California has been set up by Kevin Abergel, who worked for many years for MGI. He was most recently sales director for North America, but that office closed when Konica Minolta took on sales and distribution.

He’s now established a network of consultants with practical experience of digital embellishment in North America, and is looking to expand his services into Europe and the UK soon. He’s not confining his work to MGI/Konica Minolta based systems, but across the whole range of processes and manufacturers. He says that digital embellishment systems aren’t being sold enough to customers, especially the built-in fifth units on digital presses. ‘People aren’t selling it correctly, they aren’t necessarily understanding how to pitch it or how to teach their clients how to design for it. A lot of the clients we work with at Taktiful have a fifth colour and say, ‘Yeah, I never use it. It’s just sitting there’, or ‘I’ve had this machine for two years. Maybe I’ve run 10 jobs on it’.

Overall, you ask them what percentage of jobs are they actually using it on. Typically they say less than four or five per cent. It’s a nice-to-have, but right now it’s not a need to-have because they’re not actually putting in a lot of the marketing effort needed to be able to take that off the ground. ‘But then we see some small mom and pop companies, little three, four-person shops, and embellishment is all they talk about. They go around, they talk to every restaurant, every little trophy shop or every little shoe store. They talk about how great the print could look. They say, ‘You could put in this fluorescent green on your next mailing, or let’s put in some dimensional on your menu so that you can actually feel the wood grain’. These are the people who get it and they’re the ones that are making it work for them.’

The post Embellishment advances appeared first on Digital Printer.

Previously slated for launch at drupa 2020, the €3 million press combines what have previously been separate print and finishing processes into one, saving on both floorspace and staffing, requiring only a single operator, according to MGI co-founder, executive vice-president and managing director Victor Abergel, who discussed the AlphaJet’s genesis and gestation in some detail prior to a live production demonstration at Konica Minolta’s Industrial Digital Printing facility in Paris.

Described by MGI as ‘a single-pass Factory 4.0’, the AlphaJet uses 1600 x 1600dpi Memjet printheads and MGI/KM’s own aqueous inks and UV-curable varnish, plus a variety of foils, including holographic and cast-and-cure types, to offer a full production of dry and finishing-ready embellished sheets at the rate of 1800 simplex sheets per hour. Media support ranges from 135gsm paper to 2000-micron board and some synthetic and metallised types are supported, though may need priming first for ink adhesion.

The CMYK inks are said to cover 80% of the Pantone range and to be Fogra-certified within this. At the moment there are no firm plans to increase the number of inks, though Mr Abergel told Digital Printer that any such move would most likely see the addition of two further primary colours, such as green and blue, to optimise gamut expansion, rather than just the addition of a fifth colour.

The UV ‘varnish’ options include flood (with satin or gloss finish options), spot, ‘tactile’ (2D) and textural (3D, up to a maximum build height of 200 microns), all of which can be mixed within a sheet as desired, subject to suitable layer information being available in the artwork PDF. Foiling will then follow the contours of the UV.

Registration accuracy was a key design goal for the AlphaJet. Eschewing cylindrical designs and belt transports, the press uses flatbed imaging on trays that effectively float and are moved via electromagnetic repulsion, removing pretty well all possible sources of friction. Vibration is further minimised by mounting the print section on a 4.5 tonne granite block. The whole press weighs 20 tonnes, and including 4000-sheet input and output stackers, occupies 150sqm in a looped configuration, but requires 200sqm for all-round access and paper loading/removal.

Press control is via a three-screen ‘flight deck’ which combines operational dashboard displays for overall equipment efficiency (OEE) with production status and 3D rendering software that enables print items to be previewed, shared and approved remotely for production, including modelling the visual effects of embellishment. The Cloud-based software also allows remote monitoring and even production control via tablet. Stock profiles can be set up and loaded to facilitate job changes, a process that was said to take two or three minutes, including loading of the material.

Sustainability also figured in MGI’s design deliberations. In addition to claiming a 30% smaller energy requirement and a 60% reduction in overall carbon footprint compared to separate print and embellishment processes, Mr Abergel confirmed that the inks, UV varnish and foils used in the AlphaJet are all de-inkable according to Ingede criteria, meaning that AlphaJet print should be fully recyclable along with most analogue print types. Perhaps equally important is the argument that by using the UV flood coating, which can be a thin as three microns, plastic lamination can be avoided entirely, which Mr Abergel said had attracted considerable interest from packaging printers working for luxury brand owners looking to improve their environmental credentials.

In terms of applications, the combined print and embellishment combined with the B1 format and substrate range is a natural fit for high quality shorter-run cartons and Mr Abergel told Digital Printer  that at least one large European analogue packaging printer is considering the machine and has set up a ‘secret’ digital department to evaluate it and understand the workflow required.

On the commercial side the case is perhaps less immediately clear, but Mr Abergel gave the example of a loyalty cards printed by first AlphaJet customer ISRA, for whom the ability to go plastic-free had been a major attraction. High quality business cards and personalised high-end marketing materials are other possibilities, as are some industrial applications, including printed electronics. Mr Abergel also pointed out that the machine can embellish-only and thus could handle offset printed sheets with equal facility.

The AlphaJet is available to order now and a second demonstration centre is to be opened at Konica Minolta’s New York, USA facility.

The post KM and MGI launch AlphaJet B1 print-and-embellish press appeared first on Digital Printer.

ISRA, which is based in the Drôme department, is a commercial printer that employs more than 90 people at its premies in Romans. It signed the order for its new machine in December 2021, with installation set to take place in April this year.

Previewed as far back as drupa 2012, when its ambitions were more modest, and expected to be launched at drupa 2020, the AlphaJet is described by MGI as a ‘breakthrough innovation in industrial printing’ which integrates in a single pass ‘all stages of CMYK printing, spot UV varnish and hot foil stamping, in fixed or variable data, in 2D and 3D, in a B1 format’.

ISRA says that installing the AlphaJet, which is part of the wider five year ‘France Relance’ innovation plan, confirms not only its dedication to printing but also to innovation and differentiation. General manager Jean-Pierre Chauvin explained, ‘ISRA is a very specific company, which masters internally all the printing trades, in particular offset printing, screen printing, digital printing, hot foil stamping, printed electronics and security printing.

‘These different trades allow us to offer products with high added value, by their printing quality, their personalisation, their finishing, whether they are classic or embed contactless technologies. Today, the manufacturing of our products generally requires five main steps. The AlphaJet will allow us to simplify the production flow and to free us from certain printing constraints, without breaking loads, without waste and without loss of time, with an unequalled productivity, impossible to obtain with conventional equipment.’

Christophe Jouinot, president and director of production at ISRA, added that the arrival of the AlphaJet would herald a ‘technical revolution’ for his company. He added, ‘Until now, the implementation of different equipment to realize our packagings and our cards, had for consequence incompressible production times, minimal volumes, even the management of semi-finished products. The AlphaJet will enable us to gain in reactivity, but also in quality, because of an exceptional quadri printing on a great number of supports, in photo quality, and a perfect register of the varnish and the hot gilding. Freed from various production breaks, we will be able to offer very short production times, on all types of prints, with eco-responsible products with high added value.’

Speaking from the manufacturers point of view Edmond Abergel, CEO of MGI, stressed how the press would fit in well with ISRA’s innovative ethos. ‘During our first exchanges with the ISRA teams, we were surprised by the very strong innovation DNA that carried the dynamics of the company,’ the CEO said. ‘And by its implementation by a team of experts of conventional technologies, very different from each other. At the end of a process of thorough tests and trials, these are the experts who validated the acquisition of the AlphaJet.’

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Partnering with Premier Paper, which showed UMP DigiFinesse papers optimised for toner printing (including HP Indigo) as well as pre-cut banner sheets in Mondi’s Color Copy range, and Konica Minolta, which demonstrated its Genarate augmented reality software in addition to a running AccurioPress C7100 and an MGI JetVarnish 3D One digital embellishment press, Morgana built an e-commerce-driven packaging workflow that produced personalised sleeves for boxed gin bottles.

The recipient’s details were entered via an e-commerce storefront website running Flex 4 software and from there flowed into an artwork template on the press DFE for checking before being printed. The next stage was flood UV coating with the Morgana DigiCoater Pro 400, followed by digital ‘spot UV’ on the MGI unit, creating tactile raised ‘droplets’ and flat gloss areas on the artwork, picking out image and logo details respectively. Cutting out the sleeve was done on a Valiani Omnia cutting table, manually folded and glued.

Morgana’s marketing manager Wendy Baker told Digital Printer, ‘We’ve had really positive feedback from all of the customers that we welcomed to our Print ‘n’ Finish event, particularly with regard to the web-to-print, coating, embellishment and cutting of the boxes demonstration – it was great to see how the personalised boxes were created and showcased the products from all the partners – Premier Paper, Konica Minolta and Morgana. A really successful event for all of us …and lots of happy customers as they left with their box and free bottle of gin!’

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Route 1 Print’s factory on a quiet industrial estate in Wath-upon-Dearne, just north of Rotherham, looks large but otherwise unremarkable from the outside. But inside, it’s a working showroom for state-of-the-art presses, both analogue and digital, finishing equipment and a custom workflow that can handle thousands of jobs a day. A tour of the factory floor is an exercise in classical perspective, with lines of overhead trunking and data and power cable drops converging almost at infinity.

How did they get here? Adam Carnell and James Kinsella launched Instantprint in 2009 as an online small format digital print business before merging in 2012 with screen printer Bluetree in 2012, and launching Route 1 Print, initially an eBay store. This attracted print resellers as customers, filling what Mr Carnell saw as ‘a shortage in the market’. 2012 also saw the group’s first investment in litho print; wide format print was added in 2014.

The fist £1 million turnover month for Instantprint was achieved in 2016, and the year after for Route 1. A Fujifilm JetPress B2 inkjet was installed in 2017 and is used exclusively for printing business cards in a ‘cell’ arrangement that surrounds the press with the relevant finishing and packing equipment; the spot-UV and foiling capabilities of the MGI JetVarnish 3D Evo 75 installed at the start of 2020 are being tested as an upsell option for business cards, among other items. The cell approach is also applied to book production (including both booklets and perfect bound) and for flat and folded products such as leaflets and flyers.

A Screen TruepressJet 520 roll-fed inkjet was added in 2018 for booklet production, and last year saw the addition of a second unit on the site which will bring total space to over 140,000sqft, with plans to link the two buildings already underway. The Landa S10P B1 perfecting nanographic press was installed some months ago but shown to the public last month.

Route 1 Print now has over 400 staff, pays all of them a living wage or more and head of Route 1 Mark Young told visitors to the open days ‘our factory is your factory’. Its approach to helping its customers grow their businesses includes offering an API to integrate online ordering directly from customer websites, including those based on WordPress, into Route 1’s production systems, a development of the Bluetree Connect concept introduced in 2013. Mr Kinsella said that he sees this integration with customers as ‘a big part of the business going forward,’ and the service is now being pitched as an ‘easy-to-use web platform’, supported by industry experts whose advice is intended to help clients grow their business.

Adding to the repertoire

Inside Route 1’s premises in Yorkshire

Additions to the product offering in addition to the expanded wide-format services include the option to have unfinished sheets delivered, for customers to manage their own
finishing. Value-added services such as item counting and branded labelling are in development. A straw poll of desired products on the open day that Digital Printer attended included personalised brochures, foiling, embossing, split deliveries and bespoke sizes. Many of these are already in the pipeline, and the bespoke sizes – within limits – are being investigated too, though within the constraints of what Mr Carnell called ‘standardised processes’, which are key to Route 1’s ability to handle thousands of orders a day.

To do this, the company wrote its own production management systems to keep everything moving in as automated a way as possible. ‘From printing, the first touch is packing shrink-wrapped items,’ says Lewis Rogal. The data flows to support this offer real-time tracking, plus API-based integration with courier services such as TNT and Royal Mail. The digital print fleet also includes Xerox iGen 5 for SRA3 output and an HP Indigo 10000 for B2, used extensively for flyers and leaflets; in November 2019 it recorded 4.8 million clicks, though 4 million a month is more typical. Indigo is used for higher coverage jobs, while lower coverage work is routed to the Screen inkjet. Perfect binding is done on Horizon BQ 470 and 480 binders and is one of the biggest growth areas at the moment. Booklet-making is done with Horizon Stitchliner Mk IIIs and a 5500, typically handling between 120 and 150 booklet jobs per shift with finishing make-ready achieved in around three minutes. Polar guillotines are also set up electronically and can be ready for a new job in 30 seconds.

Folding duties are performed by three Stahl machines which can process batched-up work at up to 90,000 items an hour in total. Work on heavier stocks from 200 to 450gsm is handled on MB Bäuerle units at up to 30,000 items per hour; ‘digital’ folding solutions were rejected as being too slow. Die cutting is done on a venerable Heidelberg cylinder. Dashboard displays around the production floor show workload and progress.

‘We used to focus on getting work to process,’ commented Mr Rogal, ‘now it’s about getting it away from it’. To further this, roller feed systems are used to transport finished work to wrap and despatch stations. Barcodes are widely used to route jobs. In the November 2019 peak some 8000 jobs a day were being processed. ‘We don’t stack pallets, work goes straight into despatch,’ he adds.

On the wide-format side an HP Scitex FB500 hybrid printer churns out signage, PoP and exhibition work a rate that can cover the entire factory floor in a shift. It’s paired with Kongsberg cutting table and Route 1 produced 450 roller banners a day, a figure that it says is the highest in the UK. Mr Carnell told Digital Printer that Route 1 will be moving into textile printing, initially via offering soft signage products. ‘We’re learning the materials and the technology at the moment,’ he said. Given what the Bluetree Group has achieved in little over a decade, you might think that they will have to slow down now. They’re not showing any signs of it. 

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Giving an impression of higher quality via the group of special effects that are now referred to as embellishment should bring added value for the printer too, in terms of the margin the work can command. That’s just as well, as some of the emerging breed of digital ‘embellishment presses’ can cost more than a complete colour press.

Embellishment presses from Scodix can combine effects such as raised spot UV with foiling

Broadly they offer spot varnish (with a choice of high gloss, silk or matt), sometimes with a raised effect, and sometimes with the ability to apply a foil, whether metallic, holographic, diffraction or just a special colour.

Here we’re providing a quick run through and update of the main digital embellishment systems. Some are built into digital presses and by definition work with digital print. The standalone systems may be equally relevant to short run litho, where their lack of requirement for physical dies or plates can pay off in time and cost.

However, standalone embellishment printers can be pretty big investments – being essentially single-colour inkjet presses, they can cost more than a full-colour dry toner press. An important thing to check is whether they work straight onto paper, as some of them require a laminate to be applied first, adding to time and cost.

Hot foil gives attractive effects that can’t be achieved by ink or toner. Digital foilers don’t need metal dies and every image can be different, which suits short runs and variable data products such as business cards. However, look out for the edges of the foil, which may be more ragged than you’d get from a physical die or punch.

Most UV spot varnishers offer foiling of either the hot or cold type, with separate inline foiling units. A much lower investment will get you a hot foiler that works directly onto dry toner or Indigo prints without metal dies – by heating the print, the toner warms up more than the paper and so activates the foil’s adhesive layer. The original type, sold mainly by Caslon in the UK, have been around for decades, while more recent players include Vivid, with its Matrix range. The past five years or so have also seen thermal laminators being modified to apply hot foil onto toner in a very versatile package for minimal extra cost. We’ve covered such lamination-foiling systems often in Digital Printer, most recently in the Big Finishing Focus in the November 2019 issue.

Digital UV spot varnishers

At the end of 2019 Duplo ran a ‘soft launch’ of an add-on foiling module called DigiFoil for its DuSense Pro Sensory Coater, and this is rolling out around now, with the first installation at Flexpress in Leicester.

The DuSense inkjet ‘high build’ (raised image) spot UV printer was announced at drupa 2016 and shipped a few months later. It offers auto feeding of SRA3/B3+ sheets up to 364mm wide and 740mm long, at speeds of 1080sph. The varnish height can be varied between 20 and 80 microns to give raised and textured effects. Registration and correction to fit the printed image is performed by built-in cameras.

Steinemann offers high productivity B1 digital spot UV and foiling systems that use Kurz’s DFoil technology

The original DuSense is still available, but Duplo’s marketing manager Zunaid Rahman says that most customers are opting for the slightly more expensive Pro model, which adds a corona conditioning system that allows the varnish to adhere to untreated papers without the need for laminating. It also has a barcode reader, allowing automatic job image call-up and machine set-up as soon as a pre-printed sheet is fed. The Duplo DigiFoil hot module sits inline with the DuSense or Pro, and can be retrofitted to existing installations.

The DuSense system goes head-to-head on format with the SRA3 MGI JetVarnish 3D One, introduced last October and sold exclusively by its partner Konica Minolta. The format complements KM’s own dry toner press range, though it will work with print from any source. This is now the entry level to the MGI range, running at 2077sph with a variable varnish height from 21 to 116 microns.

So far KM hasn’t announced a foiling option, but there’s already an iFoil unit of the correct width available inline with the MGI Meteor 8700XL+ digital colour dry toner press, as a package called Meteor Unlimited Colors XL.

At the beginning of 2019 Friedheim took over the UK distributorship for the Scodix range of inkjet ‘Digital Enhancement Presses.’ At the same time Scodix announced two B2 models that fit below the very high end, very fast B1 Ultra 106. The Ultra 202 is based on the previous Ultra 2 and is described as a ‘fully featured’ model, meaning it works with any digital print (dry toner, HP Indigo, inkjet, litho) and can produce Scodix’s full range of built-in embellishment effects: Sense (raised and/or textured, Braille); Foil (hot or cold, up to four rolls); variable data; Metallic (varnish over metallised substrate); spot low build; Cast & Cure (embossed ‘holographic’ effects); Crystal (faceted gem effects); and Glitter (adds reflective glitter).

The Ultra 101 is a new entry level model, intended as an entry level to the Scodix range, intended to run with HP Indigo or litho output. It offers six built-in effects compared to the nine of the 202 and its maximum build height is 90 microns compared to the 202’s 260 microns.

Friedheim is UK distributor for the Czech Komfi range, but mainly sells its laminators rather than its Spotmatic inkjet spot varnishers, which aren’t as fully featured as Scodix.

MGI offers both sheet and roll fed models. The sheet fed JetVarnish Evolution takes B1+ format sheets at 2291sph. For B2 sheets running in portrait format then it’s 3123sph, and you’d also run some of the long B3 format sheets this way (with throughput depending on the actual sheet length). The 75cm kit lets it take B2 in landscape orientation across the width, boosting throughput to 4200sph. The top-of-the-range JetVarnish 3D Evo 75 – with the iFoil module – has recently seen its first UK installation at South Yorkshire trade printer Route 1 Print.

A year ago the German metallic foil manufacturer Kurz demonstrated its new DM-Jetliner inkjet web digital foiler at an HP customer event, running inline with an HP Indigo 6900 web-fed label press. This applies Kurz’s own Digital Metal foil and can be fitted before or after the press.

Steinemann, a Swiss company, has developed a foiling module called DFoil to fit inline with its DMax spot UV varnisher, available in 72 and 106cm widths. It applies Kurz Digital Metal foils over the spot UV (which can be flat or raised), from up to seven separate rolls. Its speed is up to 5000 B1sph or double that for B2. Heidelberg is Steinemann’s UK agent for these systems.

UK manufacturer Autobond also can add cold foiling to its SUV spot UV units that it originally developed to run inline with its heavy duty laminators for 360, 520 and 740mm sheets. These can apply up to 100 micron thickness. It can also offer hot foiling for toner-based print.
For smaller formats, UK supplier i-Sub Digital offers a cold foiling option called Digi-Foil for the Mimaki UJF range of small UV-LED flatbeds, based on a modified Vivid Matrix laminator and foil feeder that works with Mimaki’s sticky primer ink. A hand foil feeder can be used with larger format sheets from the JFX200 flatbed, which prints the same primer.

On-press effects

Kodak was the first company to offer on-press embellishment with its first five-unit Nexpress models in 2002. Today it still has the widest choice of special toners on Nexpresses and the later Nexfinity models, though it hasn’t added many in recent years. Kodak’s Dimensional clear toner can produce variable height images up to 40 microns after heat treatment. There’s an alternative 2D clear toner too, with various software options to produce protective coatings over image areas and an external finisher to polish it to high gloss. The only true metallic is gold, not silver. Instead a ‘pearlised’ sort-of-metallic effect can be created over grey tints (or other colours) with clear toner. There’s an opaque white which works over metallised or self-coloured media.

Duplo’s DuSense Pro with the Digit Foil option allows both spot UV and foiling to be combined

Ricoh and Xerox have introduced embellishment toners for fifth units on some dry toner presses: Xerox’s latest Iridesse has six units and can print for instance gold plus silver, or white then colours then a metallic. HP Indigo offers opaque white, silver and spot clear gloss on its SRA3, B2 and roll-fed liquid toner models. It’s possible to build up raised clear effects with multiple passes, but each extra layer adds a click charge. MGI’s Meteor presses are four-colour only, but the optional Unlimited Colors XL version uses inline hot foiling to add extra colours and effects.

The various inkjet presses shipping so far do not offer inline embellishment. However MGI’s forthcoming AlphaJet B1 print system, due to be launched at drupa, will combine four or six colour Memjet aqueous inkjet printing with UV white, UV 3D JetVarnish and iFoil units to produce single-pass embellished print.

Note that the use of a truly opaque white ink/toner over a metallised paper or board can give a very realistic foil effect where ‘holes’ in the coverage let the metallic base show through. The cover of Digital Printer’s December 2019/January 2020 issue was done this way by Duplo, using a Ricoh press to put white over mirror-finish silver paper, then lay colour over that (including over the silver to get other metallics) and then used its DuSense Pro spot UV printer to give it an embossed feel. If you have the issue, you can judge the results for yourself.

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Running from 4 – 6 February, the open days saw a range of Route 1 trade customers and Landa guests visit the factory at Wath upon Dearne, where head of Route 1 Mark Young told them ‘our factory is your factory’, and together with other parent group Bluetree and Route 1 staff explained the company’s approach to helping its customers grow their businesses. This includes offering an API to integrate online ordering directly from customer websites, including those based on WordPress, into Route 1’s production systems. 

The demonstration of the Landa press was the part that interested attendees most. On the day that Digital Printer attended, it featured jobs prepared by Landa rather than work for Route 1 customers, though Route 1 confirmed that the press was already producing paid work. The samples showed a wide colour gamut even in CMYK-only mode, which is how Route 1 has its machine configured, so that work will match across all its press types. Samples of what is achievable using the seven-colour configuration (which adds green, orange and blue inks) were also shown separately, along with a explanation of the nanographic printing process.

Head of Route 1 production development Lewis Rogal said that the press had been running at its rated speed of 6500 sheets per hour (simplex, duplex throughput is half that) and faster; a forthcoming speed hike to 10,200sph was mentioned by the Landa demonstrator, as was on-the-fly correction for quality drift.

According to product and pricing specialist Jack Crofts, the B1 MGI embellishment press brings a great improvement – 20 times the capacity – to the firm’s digital ‘spot UV’ capability, while the foiling made possible by the iFoil L component of the embellishment system will be launched over the next few months. The unit’s camera system that provides image-based registration was a key factor in its selection.

A report on the open day will appear in the March 2020 issue of Digital Printer.

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The machine expands Solopress’ foiling and spot UV capabilities and should allow for increased turnaround speed, product range and quality control.

‘Previously, we were only able to offer spot UV varnish on business cards,’ said managing director Simon Cooper. ‘But, with the MGI machine on board, we’re able to apply both spot UV and foil finishes to a much broader range of Solopress products – and at sizes up to 364 x 1020mm.’

‘Having the capacity to complete these jobs inhouse allows us to cut lead times, provide direct support, and carry out instant quality control on-site.’

The MGI JETvarnish 3DS also has environmental credentials, operating with low energy consumption and a self-contained design that prevents ozone and vapour from solvents escaping into the atmosphere. 

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