Foilstar: Cold Foiling Hots Up! |
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In today’s print market where margins are continually shrinking and costs are on the increase, most printers would agree that in order to protect their margins they need to reduce costs and increase output.
There is an alternative to ‘tightening the belt’. A developing trend currently practised by a few printers is to improve margins through finding ways to add value to their printed work and differentiate themselves from their competitors.
In an earlier edition of Heidelberg E-News we discussed printers differentiating themselves in the marketplace through the use of UV technology. With UV, printers can expand their product offering and print on plastic substrates and create special effects unique to UV technology.
As well, double coating or Duo presses are gaining in popularity, again offering printers a market edge and the potential to protect and even increase their margins.
One particular value added practice, hot foiling, is a technology that has been around for some time. Still, hot foiling is practised by only a few printers because of the prohibitive cost and laborious processes involved in using hot foiling machinery.
Heidelberg’s cold foiling technology, released at IPEX 2006, offers printers an economical and practical alternative to hot foiling. Cold foil application can be done inline at normal printing speeds.
The cold foil unit sits on top of an existing print unit. It is a two spool system - one for unwinding the foil, and the other for rewinding the used foil.
As the sheet runs through the press a special glue is applied to the sheet in the unit immediately before the cold foil unit. Since this is done using a conventional printing plate, the process allows the operator to easily adjust register.
The foil is then applied to the sheet in the next unit, between the blanket cylinder and impression cylinder. The foil sticks to the areas of the sheet which contain glue and the excess foil is then taken up on the rewind spool.
With the use of cold foil, and oil based glue with conventional plates, printing speeds of up to 18,000 sph can be achieved.
Cold foiling also offers an added advantage. The foil can be over printed immediately after application using conventional inks, allowing printers to create special metallic effects. Importantly very fine lines, intricate shapes and small font text can be produced in foil with very sharp edges and accurate forms.
Unique to Heidelberg is the new six roll system foiling where six individual rolls can be used. This results in reduced waste and allows printers to apply different coloured foils in one pass.
Heidelberg’s new cold foiling system, Foilstar, will available on CD74, CD102 and XL105 presses later this year from Heidelberg.
Further Information:
Lindsay Barnes – Product Manager, Sheetfed
Tel. +61 3 9205 4111
Email: Lindsay.Barnes@heidelberg.com
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