NEW TONER FOR COATING/VARNISH EFFECT

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Toners for Digital Coating and “Varnish” Effects
With spot-varnish type coating effects now achievable in the digital world, the quest continues to get toners to behave more like conventional ink on offset presses. HP introduced an on-press solution for spot coating with its liquid toners at Print 05. The transparent ElectroInk can be installed in fifth, sixth or seventh color stations on the Indigo 5000, 3050 and 3000 models, as well as the UltraStream 2000.To achieve the differential effect, clear matte ink is applied over gloss paper stock. While not a protective coating, “it almost adds a third dimension to the work and is relatively easy to preflight,” says Tom Cherry, president of Coptech Inc., Woburn, MA. The Boston-area firm beta-tested the product and has been using it for more than a year. The 25-employee company, with roots in software duplicating dating back to 1986, has developed a niche in color-matching print products to 125-lpi, screen-printed CDs.”We can change color curves and tweak dots on our Indigos,” says Cherry, who has been an Indigo press user since 1990, before the HP acquisition. Prior to this option, Coptech had to outsource for spot varnish which, as printers know, can be an expensive and sometimes cost-prohibitive proposition, especially in competitive quoting situations. http://www.hp.com/go/graphicartsAlso setting up like a fifth (spot) color for high visual impact is the Kodak NexPress 2100 plus and 2500’s NexGlosser near-line imaging unit. Together with NexPress Clear Dry Ink, the NexGlosser is part of the company’s Intelligent Glossing Solution. For coating, the unit is filled with clear toner that can be applied as full or spot coverage over either a gloss or matte substrate. Different levels of gloss are obtainable: The system uses a fuser and pressure roller to heat and smooth the toner, bringing up the gloss to simulate lamination. A barcode reader automatically presets the glosser for page width and thickness. Settings also can be customized, when necessary. http://www.graphics.kodak.comXerox’s award-winning, patented and chemically grown EA (emulsion aggregation) dry toner is available as a low-gloss and matte finish. Xerox says the micro-encapsulated polyethylene spheres line up like beads and lie down more evenly, resulting in more uniform imagery, finer lines and higher resolutions. Devices that run the quick-melting EA, such as the DocuColor 250, require less toner and, therefore, less energy for fusing.Overall inline coating is available on iGen3 digital presses via Xerox’s mid-2005 partnership with Epic Products International, whose CTi-635 system attaches to 110 and 90 models. 

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January 10, 2007 at 12:58 PM