The new colours include bright gold, green, turquoise, blue, red and black. The Essex-based printer uses Konica Minolta’s JETVarnish 3DS technology to apply the coloured foils, followed by a sealing coat of UV varnish for added shine and durability. This method allows them to print both large expanses of foil and delicate details as fine as 0.5mm.

Print products benefitting from the new options include flyers, leaflets, business cards, greeting cards, postcards, invitations, brochures and presentation folders.

Managing director Simon Cooper said, ‘Following the success of foil printed products, we felt the time was right to expand the range and offer a broader choice of colours. With Christmas approaching, we’re hoping customers will embrace the new options and add some colour and shine to their seasonal print.

‘Foil printing requires customers to provide two layers of artwork: one that indicates the foiled area, and one with the remaining design elements to be printed conventionally.’

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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.’

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According to the company, the Scodix Foil and Sense applications were key drivers for the investment and offers the company a widening of automation possibilities and economic benefits as well as elevating the luxury look of its products. DPP is an automation focused digital printing company based in Houten, Netherlands. It specialises in a wide variety of commercial printing applications, all of which are customisable by online shops such as PeterPrint.

In the company group, products are sold directly via web shops amongst other big resellers and online printers.

Ferry Lammerts, founder of PeterPrint and owner of DPP, said, ‘In a market where selling standard A4 leaflets is only profitable when you have a huge volume, embellishment gives you the opportunity to add value to each sheet. With the proven technology of Scodix, in combination with our HP Indigo presses, we found a perfect match. The excellent automation possibilities and great number of possible paper types signify that Scodix is the right choice for us.

‘The future in print is not just growth in volume. Growth in volume will make you busier but not necessarily more profitable or happier. It’s creating remarkable printed products by combining new techniques that add value with a continuous focus on automation. Scodix makes it possible to add value to each sheet. If you look at the range of special possibilities, we offer like digital die cutting, white ink, foil and UV varnish you know you have something more to offer than your standard MC glossy leaflet.’

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The trade printer, which operates digital presses from HP and Canon, values Duplo’s finishing equipment, having also been the first company in the country to purchase a DuSense sensory coater, which was installed at its Leicester premises in 2017.

The Digi Foiler, which uses the Qsleek technology, has been especially designed to add foil to the clear ‘spot UV’ ink laid down by the DuSense. It uses an induction heating process inside the roller, which uses a silicon compound rubber that has been designed to follow the contours of the coated effect. Duplo says this brings higher accuracy than found in competing systems. The roller surface temperature is continuously measured and the heating tubes ensure that the heat distribution across the roller is uniform; highly elastic foils are used to avoid cracking and to yield a smooth and even coating.

‘Flexpress has never shied away from new technology,’ said managing director Steve Wenlock. ‘In fact we embrace it as it gives us an edge over competition and allows us to give a much wider range of services to our customers. The application of this new raised foil technique gives beautiful results and I was excited at the potential that it could give – we already foil, but this is new, and I expect our customers to be bowled over by it.’

Mitch Ball, regional sales manager for Duplo added, ‘I loved showing off the Digi Foil to Steve, it’s a perfect fit and compliments the DuSense and Flexpress’ commitment to quality and excellence. It’s hard trying to get a UK first into a printer since it’s more of a beta site than anything else, but we knew Flexpress would be able to fly with it. The effect that the combination of the DuSense and the Digi Foiler are absolutely epic and create a lasting impression, coupled with Steve’s innate ability to sell print to the trade, I have no doubt he’s going to be able to make his production floor even more profitable.’

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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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The DuSense DigiFoil option works in a similar way to existing foil-over-toner systems but because the foil is applied to the UV-cured oil printed by the DuSense, it takes on the 3D characteristics of the latter, rather than laying flat, which provides a visual complement to the elaborate textures that the DuSense can create. Thanks to a registration system that Duplo says alternatives do not have, the DigiFoil option aligns tightly with the ‘spot UV’ print created by the DigiSense’s 600dpi printheads. Duplo has experimented with a number of foil types and colours and says ‘the final result is a highly accurate, incredibly premium looking finish’.

Complementing this, the PFI Blade B3 Shape Cutter is an X-Y cutter aimed at producing short run packaging, custom-shaped cards, labels and samples. Claimed to have a small footprint and to offer easy to operate ‘green button’ technology, the PFI Blade is said to be affordable and therefore to lower the cost of creating small run items without requiring conventional dies, plus the digital flexibility for each job to be different as required.

Packaging Innovations runs on 26 and 27 February at the NEC, Birmingham.

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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.’

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.

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.

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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The Foliant Taurus can work at speeds up to 30 m/min and features a rising pile back separation stream feeder and a suction paper feed head. It incorporates feeder, laminator, and a sheet separator in a single construction. 

‘We had an older lamination system and it was time to upgrade,’ explained Colourpoint director Karl Hnat. ‘We reviewed the options on the market and we liked the Foliant for a number of reasons. It is robustly built, can handle a wide range of substrates and is easy to run. It fitted the bill. 

‘We looked at the machine at various trade shows, tested it in the IFS demonstration suite and saw it running at another printers who are producing quality work similar to ourselves.’

The Buckinghamshire-based business has also purchased a Foliant Multi-functional Inprinting Unit to meet its foiling needs.

The unit applies foil or varnish to a pre-printed black toner. The sheet can then be overprinted mono or four-colour. It runs a wide range of colours including gold, silver, red and green and a clear gloss for spot varnish. 

‘We have traditional foiling capabilities,’ finished Mr Hnat. ‘But the foiling unit allows us to offer cost effective digital foiling on fast turnaround short runs. We can respond to what customers want.’

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Using a thermal transfer paper called T.Foil Dark, the process involves printing the required design with a ‘composite’ black made from all four process colours in the Oki printers (the C612 or the C332 offering CMYK or CMYK + white). The printed design on the transfer sheet is applied to the garment via a normal heat press to transfer the toner to it, which acts as an adhesive for the foil which is also heat pressed onto the garment. The finished transfer is given a final press to ensure feel, look and durability.

‘The new T.Foil Dark transfer process offers the ability for the user to produce stunning results quickly and very cost effectively onto almost any garment regardless of colour or textile composition and involves no labour intensive cutting and weeding,’ said Jim Nicol, managing director at The Magic Touch. ‘The bottom line is the user is able to produce transfers (including transfer paper & foil) for less than £1 up to A4 and £2 for A3, quickly and profitably.’

The foils are available in 18 colour options, from solid colours to sparkle metallics, in 30cm x 25m rolls, while the T.Foil Dark paper is available in A4 and A3 sheets. The Oki printers ship with Space Control Basic software to generate the transfer print on T.Foil Dark, though other transfer papers are also available, and ship for less than £300. The software is also available separately for existing owners of the Oki printers.

The post T-shirts get foiled again appeared first on Digital Printer.

The Telford-based company has invested in a ColorSplash CS4000 printer, a ColorFlare CF350 foiling and lamination system and a ColorCut FB520 flatbed cutter.

Hen Party Superstore and its sister company, Play & Party, are both part of the Blue Cockerel Group – a long-established family run business which recently decided to bring its printing and finishing facility fully in-house.

Managing director Mark Hoar discovered Intec Printing Solutions at the UK Print Show in 2018. Mr Hoar and operations manager Sophie Thornton report that they were extremely impressed with the diverse range of equipment in the Intec range. 

‘We’re now typically turning round 100 orders a day,’ said Ms Thornton. ‘And the quality and functionality of the Intec kit is really helping us satisfy the high expectations of our fantastic customers.’

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