Autobond - Digital Printer https://www.digitalprintermag.co.uk/company/autobond/ Digital Printer magazine Fri, 03 Nov 2023 11:40:31 +0000 en-US hourly 1 Cause and effect https://www.digitalprintermag.co.uk/key-articles/86558/cause-and-effect/ https://www.digitalprintermag.co.uk/key-articles/86558/cause-and-effect/#respond Fri, 03 Nov 2023 11:40:31 +0000 https://www.digitalprintermag.co.uk/?post_type=key_article&p=86558 Special effects printing is a way to add impact, value and margin to every sheet but there are a lot of ways it can be achieved digitally

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Special effects printing is a way to add impact, value and margin to every sheet but there are a lot of ways it can be achieved digitally, at different points in the production process. Michael Walker shines a light on the options.

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.

Cause and effect

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.

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Embellishment advances https://www.digitalprintermag.co.uk/key-articles/76231/embellishment-advances/ https://www.digitalprintermag.co.uk/key-articles/76231/embellishment-advances/#respond Mon, 14 Nov 2022 12:50:32 +0000 https://www.digitalprintermag.co.uk/?post_type=key_article&p=76231 What was once called special effects and is now embellishment offers vast potential for stunning new creative effects, but can also add value and help to avoid digital print following colour offset in a race to the bottom in pricing, says Simon Eccles

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What was once called special effects and is now embellishment offers vast potential for stunning new creative effects, but can also add value and help to avoid digital print following colour offset in a race to the bottom in pricing, says Simon Eccles

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.

Embellishment advances

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.

Embellishment advances

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.’

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New techniques to put you on your metal https://www.digitalprintermag.co.uk/key-articles/50136/new-techniques-to-put-you-on-your-metal/ https://www.digitalprintermag.co.uk/key-articles/50136/new-techniques-to-put-you-on-your-metal/#comments Mon, 01 Jul 2019 12:56:29 +0000 https://www.digitalprintermag.co.uk/?post_type=key_article&p=50136 If you want a truly metallic look on your printed materials, then you have to use real metal.

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If you want a truly metallic look on your printed materials, then you have to use real metal. There are various different processes for achieving this in digital print. Simon Eccles goes prospecting.

There are three ways to get more metal into your print: it can be mixed as flakes into the ink or toner that forms the image, used underneath the image as a silver or metallised layer on a substrate, or applied on top as a foil made of microscopically thin metal. All three ways demand very different techniques and processes, and give different results.

Metallic-er

A metallic substrate may be a board or paper pre-printed with silver ink, or it may be a metallised plastic layer (usually polyester) applied as a laminate onto paper or board.

Unlike printed ink, a highly reflective near-mirror finish is possible from metallised plastic, as well as various diffraction and holographic effects. Some digital processes are happier with plastics than others. HP Indigos can do it, and so can UV inkjets, whether the wide-format type, or the little ‘baby flatbeds’ available from Mimaki, Mutoh and Roland. UV inks are used by the Konica Minolta and Komori B2 inkjet presses sold respectively as the AccurioJet KM-1 and Impremia IS29. Landa’s B1 S10 commercial press will print on plastic too.

Some dry toner printers will work well with metallised films, some won’t, so the best way to check is to ask your supplier for samples and run a test. Broadly speaking, most are okay, with decent results reported for MGI Meteors, current Konica Minoltas, Ricoh Pro C current models and their Heidelberg Versafire equivalents, as well as the latest Xerox Iridesse.

Non-UV wide-format inks are less certain. Aqueous inkjets can’t print on metallised plastics without expensive extra coatings. Solvent and latex inks should work on plastics, and some models can print opaque white.

Celloglas’ Mirri range is well established and available as board with a wide range of metallic effects, mostly intended for litho or UV inkjet. However there’s a digital HP Indigo capable material in silver or ‘rainbow’ diffraction effects in 255 or 325gsm and sizes up to 500 x 700mm. Celloglas will also apply laminate to your choice of paper or other substrate to special order. Mirri’s data sheet says it will work with HP Indigos and UV inkjets, but for anything else you really need to run tests.

Some other film suppliers have metallics that you can laminate yourself onto paper or board. Graphic Image Films, UK distributer for the Spanish Derprosa range, can supply gloss silver and gold, plus diffraction/holograhic effect materials. A new anti-marking version is out, which is resistant to finger marks. These can be printed by HP Indigo or UV inks, plus some toner types; the company says it’ll supply free samples for trials.

A neat trick with Derprosa and rivals’ soft touch velvet-feel metallic film is to print a clear spot gloss, which smooths out the matt surface to give a near-mirror effect. Scodix in particular promoted this effect after a Spanish customer worked it out, but it should work with any high gloss spot UV varnish.

Scodix (available through Friedheim in the UK) has refined the process, which it calls Metallic: here a gloss silver metallised substrate is overlaminated with an ink-receptive clear matt film for HP Indigo, UV inkjet or some dry toner printers, with blockout white if needed in some areas. Scodix Sense clear spot inkjet varnish is then printed on top. The ink colours the metallic effect where needed and the Scodix Sense brings it up to fully reflective glory.

Nigel Tracey, head of packaging at Scodix, says ‘you can make unbelievably complex coloured effects very easily, but the downside is the cost of materials is very high. It’s mostly used for sample packs and short run luxury packaging.’

The UK’s Kernow Print can supply Metalik, a highly reflective metallic board range in silver, gold and copper, with separate grades suitable for toner print or HP Indigo ElectroInk, and sheet sizes up to B2. It’s also introducing a metallised self-adhesive plastic for wide format printercutters that use solvent or latex inks. If applied to glass, the metallic effect is visible from both sides.

MDV in Germany supplies a metallic silver (not mirror) substrate called UltraSilver, on paper, board or film. This works for some dry toner presses, as well as UV inkjets, the company says. UltraSilver is available from UK paper merchant Elliott Baxter, double-sided in 125-360gsm weights, or single-sided in 120 and 235gsm.

Beata Ulman, senior product marketing manager for commercial and industrial print at Ricoh UK, says ‘We can print on MDV UltraSilver, however we find it very matt and our pre-sales specialists prefer to use Kernow Metalik boards to showcase a true metallic effect to our customers.’

New techniques to put you on your metal

HP Indigos can print white ink over
metallised substrates

White-out

If you print onto a metallic substrate directly, then transparent inks or toners will take on a metallic tint, but they’ll look a bit faded. If you want normal colour to show then a white undercoat can be run underneath. If you print white overall and leave ‘holes’ for the metallic substrate to show though, it resembles spot foiling, but with the digital print advantage of variable images. The results can be striking, especially if the white is also halftoned to vary the metal show-through.

All current HP Indigo presses can print an opaque white as a first colour, which works well over metallised substrates. Dry toner digital presses that can print white include Kodak’s five-unit NexPress and Nexfinity presses; Ricoh’s five unit Pro C7100 and current Pro C7200 models; the old Xerox Colour 1000i and the latest Xerox Iridesse; and OKI’s amazingly good value £1995 Pro7411WT (A4) five colour desktop printer (there is also an A3 model that can print white, but only by removing black).

Hi ho silver

Recent years have seen an increasing number of digital presses with metallic inks or toners. While the results are certainly metallic, they are like silver paint, rather than mirror finish. One the other hand, it’s easy to print halftones and graduated tints for more complex colour effects.

Kodak was the first to introduce a metallic toner, gold, for its five unit NexPresses at drupa 2008. It took a good while to deliver, and so far there is still no silver even for the latest Nexfinity models.

Xerox was next with the option for gold or silver for its five-unit Colour 1000i (a Fuji-Xerox model). Both were the brightest dry toner metallics to date, but were replaced by further improved gold and silver on the Iridesse introduced last year. This has six colour stations, so can print two specials at once out of the choice of silver, gold, white and clear. This opens up a lot of options, especially as the colour order can be swapped around so one special can be an undercoat and one or two can be overcoats.

HP introduced a white ink for all Indigo digital press models in 2010, which was very successful over metallised substrates. In 2013, it introduced the long-hinted silver metallic ink, though initially only for its continuous feed label presses; silver for sheet-fed Indigos arrived last year. Given a seven-unit Indigo this opens the possibility of printing CMYK plus white, clear and silver, in any order.

Some wide format solvent inkjets offer metallic inks. These are essentially silver-coloured, but are intended for overprinting to give other metallic colours.

Mimaki and Roland supply metallic inks on some of their wide format solvent printers, with Mimaki releasing an improved SS21 silver for its CJV300 and CJV150 series printer/cutters in the past couple of years. Mutoh doesn’t have a metallic ink so far.

Efforts to develop metallic UV inks previously haven’t seen great success for reasons to do with the thick ink films. However, Mimaki has recently released a UV-LED cured metallic ink called MUH-100-Si for its UJF-715-plus baby flatbed that looks respectably shiny, so it can be done.

New techniques to put you on your metal

Roland offers silver ink for some of its print-and-cut machines

Swatches and software

Often the digital front ends for metallic-capable printers will automatically generate swatch books which run colours of various tints and combinations over the metallic ink/toner. These can be given unique numbers that when used in the digital artwork as special colours will let the RIP call up the corresponding combinations.

If you don’t have that, then the US company Color-Logic has a software solution and licence for printers to create and print Swatch books for CMYK print over any metallic layer – foil, ink or laminate. It can also generate metallic colour palettes and plugins to load into Adobe Creative Cloud applications. Its FX-Viewer is an on-screen 3D ‘virtual proofing system’ that simulates how metallic-printed artwork will catch the light when rotated.

Swatches can also be created for some metallic substrates with white-capable presses – recent examples are Folex Silver Polyester cut sheet film for HP Indigo presses, and the Kernow Print Metalik and MDV UltraSilver papers for the Ricoh Pro C7200 toner presses.

Spot cold foil on top

We’re seeing more and more methods of adapting hot foil die-stamping foil to digital printing without needing the metal dies. Briefly, they are sublimation foiling, where hot foil adhesive sticks to heated dry toner (or Indigo ElectroInk) print; or foiling units added to thermal laminators, where the rollers heat the print in the same way.

Here we’re examining alternative cold foiling methods that rely on a printed sticky ink as the adhesive (rather than a heat-activated adhesive) on the foil rolls. Foils can be mirror-finish metallics in various colours, but a wide choice of other effects, such as diffraction and holograms, patterns such as wood grains, and solid colours are available too.

Scodix and MGI offer foiling on special versions of their high-build clear UV digital spot varnish inkjets, in formats up to B1. The high build means that the final effect appears embossed as well as foiled.

Precise methods vary, but in Scodix’s case it uses an add-on unit built in the UK by Compact Foilers of Taunton. The Scodix clear UV varnish is first pinned with UV to ‘freeze’ it, and then given a second ‘activating’ zap of UV that makes it sticky. 

UK based Autobond also can add cold foiling to its SUV spot UV units that it developed to run inline with its heavy duty laminators for 360, 520 and 740mm sheets. It can also offer hot foiling. Managing director John Gilmore says ‘We have a unique selling point of being the only manufacturer in the world to make a machine that can film laminate, spot UV and foil inline.’

The German foil maker Leonhard Kurz makes B3 and B3 sublimation foilers called DM-Luxliners, but it also offers a dedicated 324mm wide (B2) sheetfed inkjet cold foiler called DM-Liner UV Ink. It uses Kurz’s specially developed Digital Metal foil range, which can be overprinted by HP ElectroInks or most dry toners.

New techniques to put you on your metal

A promotional sample for Mimaki DigiFoil by UK distributor Hybrid

In February Kurz demonstrated its new DM-Jetliner inkjet web digital foiler at HP’s customer event in Tel Aviv, where it ran inline with an HP Indigo 6900 web-fed label press. It can be fitted before or after the press passes through the foil and completes the varnish cure. MGI calls its process iFoil and describes it as a hot foil process, as the ink is heated to make it sticky.

Steinemann, another German specialist, has also developed 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, at up to 5000sph. Cold foiling can also be added to the Czech Komfi 36 (B3)and 54 (B2) digital spot varnishers, also distributed by Friedheim.

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.

As CMYK digital presses are all ‘good enough’ nowadays, then extra colours and embellishment are a way for a printer to add value as well as offering customers and their designers new ways to catch their customers’ eyes. Bright metal is shiny and eye-catching and people have liked it for thousands of years. Now it’s easily accessible for digital print.

 

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