Prepress

Kingstar and X-Rite Bring Affordable Automated Closed Loop Color Management to Small and Mid Size Printers Across China

Tuesday 18. May 2010 - Kingstar integrates EasyTrax into its automated ink control consoles

X-Rite , Incorporated (NASDAQ: XRIT), the world leader in color management, measurement and communication technologies, today announced that it is partnering with Kingstar , a leading Chinese developer of automated ink control consoles to make closed loop color management an affordable reality for small to mid size printers in China.  As a result of this partnership, Kingstar has optimized its KICS remote ink control system to work seamlessly with EasyTrax , X-Rite’s semi automated press-side color scanning solution.

Iris Mangelschots, X-Rite’s Senior Vice President of sales and Marketing explains: “While printing remains a true blend of art and science, the automation of color process control in the printing workflow has become an indispensable step to remaining competitive by achieving reliable quality results with each print run.  However, until recently printers across China have typically been relying on manual operation to control the ink keys on their presses.  Thanks to our partnership with Kingstar, we are now bringing affordable and easy to implement process color control to printers of all sizes.”

It is ideal for customers who have, until now, been relying on manual operation with no systematic color management processes.

The combination of Kingstar’s KICS fully automated system with X-Rite’s EasyTrax ease of use and precise measurement technology makes affordable and reliable process control a reality for small to mid size printers, while keeping the operation very simple and within reach of all press operators.  After placing a test sheet on the EasyTrax console, users simply press the measure button to read the color bar.  The EasyTrax then sends the data to the Kingstar KICS ink control system, to adjust the ink keys on the press accordingly. 


“The integration of EasyTrax with Kingstar’s KICS system introduces new levels of automation and increased efficiency for traditional presses, thereby offering Chinese press manufacturers a clear competitive advantage. By offering automation and color management, Chinese printing press manufacturers can help their customers implement a more disciplined process control methodology that will bring them higher productivity, higher accuracy, and faster set up time, leading to overall better profitability, comments Kingstar’s general manager, Chong Bo Xu.



The integration of EasyTrax with Kingstar’s KICS will be demonstrated for the first time at IPEX