Offset Printing
Printforce invests in a Contiweb DFA for enhanced product quality
Monday 14. September 2020 - Contiweb, a specialist in advanced printing technologies, advanced drying and web handling, today announced that Dutch book printer Printforce has installed a Contiweb Digital Fluid Applicator (DFA). This is a remoistening applicator designed to significantly improve the quality of digital print products.
Printforce specialises in the digital production of books, magazines and periodicals with soft and rounded hardcover and focuses on print-on-demand to achieve zero stockholding for its customers with an average run length of just 1.6 copies. Using highly automated printing lines the company prints and dispatches directly to end customers in most cases: “We never want our customers to have to say that they are out of stock,” explains Rik Thijssen, operation manager at Printforce in the Netherlands.
Printforce’s ‘Contiweb DFA’ works inline with a Canon ProStream web inkjet printer “It was indeed recommended by Canon to use a remoistening device. The communication capability is seamless, he talks to the press, knows when to start and when to stop,” says Thijssen, adding: “We have found that the DFA, as a plug-and-play system, provides a highly controllable, measurable process. You know if the setting is correct before you get customer complaints. It’s simple, there are only two settings, front and back. It can be tuned with a simple calculation, and once you have the correct value, you don’t have to adjust anything”.
The Digital Fluid Applicator is based on the popular Contiweb Fluid Applicator for heatset web offset applications and ensures consistent coverage even at varying press speeds. The system mixes tap water and a surfactant instead of using specially treated deionised water, which is then continuously circulated to intelligently and precisely remoisten the paper on digital web presses.
According to Thijssen, customers are extremely enthusiastic about the quality of premium inkjet printing and compare it positively with offset printing. But they are less enthusiastic about the waviness of the paper: “The Prostream uses the best inks and offers excellent quality, but it is very intense. With the Contiweb DFA we get the same quality with a fast throughput, without the waviness.
“We are seeing this problem more and more in digital printing, as quality is becoming more and more demanding and more applications require, for example, high ink coverage,” explains Rutger Jansen, CEO of Contiweb, “This requires higher temperatures in the printing process, which leads to a considerable loss of moisture. For this reason, we have developed the DFA to ensure that product quality is not compromised, and we are therefore pleased to work with printers like Printforce”.
Thijssen concludes: “After a smooth installation we have received excellent customer service from Contiweb. Contiweb’s technicians have proactively detected errors on our system remotely – even before I was even alerted – we can see that Contiweb takes our work very seriously!