Finishing & Screen Printing
New Trend – Digital print coating appeals from beginning to end
Monday 19. November 2018 - More and more customers all over the world are making the most of this flexibility and shortened time-to-market. They have the assistance of Steinemann Technology AG, a proven specialist in the development and manufacture of efficient and high-quality machinery for industrial print enhancement.
Steinemann paved the way even back in 2014, when the company dedicated itself to the digital world. The first coup is an offline coating machine with advanced industrial inkjet coating technology. Since 2017, this machine, the «dmax», additionally integrates «dfoil» digital foil blocking with gloss foil – rounding off digital enhancement.
Gallus Ferd. Rüesch AG, a manufacturer of label presses, has entered the field of digital coating as well. As an ideal complement to the companys digital technology, they integrated the Steinmann module into their digital flagship, the «Gallus Labelfire». This way, gloss and matt coatings, as well as tactile relief effects, can be created inline and in a single run. What is new is that this module can also be used to create this relief effect in a metallic look through the use of metallic foils. This marks the first time a digital label press has been able to perform this task in this way.
Both machine types operate on the basis of the diVarâ coating technology developed and patented by the coatings specialist Schmid Rhyner AG. The diVarâ brand stands for «Digital Varnishing Technology». This technology can be used to create effects in new dimensions. With it, different coating depths can be used to achieve a variety of tactile experiences in a single run. Schmid Rhyner keeps its finger on the pulse of the times and is constantly developing new, innovative effect coatings for digital applications.
Systems by Steinemann and Gallus are already successfully in industrial use by customers with entrepreneurial vision. Druckhaus Mainfranken, for instance, has been working with the associated online platform, Flyeralarm, since 2014, with a «dmax»; the same is true of Insignis, a Vienna-based label-printing company that recently integrated the digital coating module DEU («Digital Embellishment Unit») in its Gallus Labelfire (Article). As these successes confirm, digital enhancement has the capability to make the best possible use of the benefits of digitalisation.