With today’s range of commercial digital presses, an amazing array of finishing effects can be achieved inline, on the press, greatly increasing productivity. However, many print companies running a digital component or digital-only businesses have some of their digital finishing equipment offline or ‘nearline’, because the degree of specialisation on that kit means it has not yet been integrated into any of the existing digital printing presses. A third option is to outsource, but that requires a careful calculation of oncosts and, of course, deadlines.

At Digitalpress, a nine-year-old 12-staff digital-only operation at Sydney’s Surry Hills, Theo Pettaras has developed much of his business from the comprehensive range of inline finishing features on the company’s NexPress SE3000 press.

Pettaras states his preference for keeping finishing inhouse to minimise non-scalable costs such as couriering on the extremely short print runs of premium embellished print the company produces for PR and design agencies mainly in the event management industry. Volumes at Digitalpress can be anywhere from 1,000 68pp A4 books to a single book,

The Digitalpress managing director calculates that finishing costs at one end of the spectrum “can almost be the same cost as printing the job … something we’re acutely aware of”.

With the NexPress, clients can ask for inline varnishing in either a satin or gloss finish, watermark spot varnishing, and digital raised printing or dimensional printing. “We might suggest on a booklet that the artwork lends itself to dimensional printing, so the cover will have various areas that are raised. That printed matter evokes a reaction – they look at the print, they touch it, and it becomes more engaging. For that reason, we’ve had a lot of success with dimensional printing over the years,” he tells ProPrint.

PMS colour matching allows a fifth colour to be added as a customised blend of Pantones, creating an increased colour gamut. There is also metallic gold which has proven highly popular, he says.

A matte fuser renders the print matte and chalky, emulating the uncoated look in offset printing. In fact, there is no soak-in as with offset inks on uncoated, so Pettaras believes the digital matte look is actually superior to the offset version on uncoated.

Of course, some effects are still only possible offline – but Digitalpress has a well featured bindery to provide these services inhouse. Effects include matte and gloss celloglazing, and sleeking (a lamination process enabling matte celloglazing that is rerun through the press for various areas to be spot-glossed. It is then run through the laminator using a gloss film, which attaches to the areas that have been selected for glossing to achieve a spot UV result). The process also works with gold lamination film. Foiling can also be done inhouse.

Pettaras estimates that some 15 per cent of Digitalpress work is outsourced – and much of it is in collaboration with Sydney finishing specialist Allkotes. (See box).

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David Procter, general manager, production printing group, at Konica Minolta, which supplies the Kodak NexPress, says the supplier has recently added an in-line UV coater from TEC Lighting in the US. But each print provider needs to assess whether inline or offline works best for them, and on which projects. He says, “For a printer that is running multiple presses, an offline solution would seem logical addition, but again I would emphasise that each location should be assessed on its own requirements.”

Digital embellishing has developed in leaps and bounds at McKellar Renown Press. Located at Carnegie, in Melbourne’s south east, the 68-year-old, 40-staff hybrid print outfit has carved a niche as a source of digital print with that something extra.

A recent addition has been a Fuji Xerox Color 800/1000 Press. McKellar’s general manager Chris Norgate says the Clear Dry Ink used by the press means embellishing a wide variety of jobs is easy and rapid, be it a clear gloss varnish, patterns or other finishes. “Because it’s an inline process, we’re able to apply embellishment on time-critical as well as direct marketing jobs, which is an added benefit, given that post-print embellishment can be difficult when dealing with customised data or printing,” says Norgate. “Inline embellishment adds value for our clients, it’s efficient and reduces time-consuming and expensive printing processes.”

Norgate says speed to market is the main advantage of the Xerox Color 800/1000. “It gives us a single point of control over various processes such as monitoring the quality of print, embellishments on variable data, as well as gloss embellishment. Having a solution that facilitates as a cornerstone for these different processes saves us from outsourcing and enables us to better monitor our operations.”

However, McKellar Renown also regularly enlists a partner to fulfil some specialised jobs. “As we are already managing so many variables, we’ve found that it’s better to use a supply-chain partner — in an economical fashion — so that we can focus on our key areas of expertise. This involves getting the most value out of all our equipment to differentiate ourselves from other providers in the market, in terms of print quality, turnaround times and so on.”

Fuji Xerox Australia’s marketing segment manager Mark Williams says the Color 800/1000 introduces a suite of operator efficient tools with key tasks automated to quickly deliver colour accuracy and repeatability.  “Many of the inline embellishments our customers are creating can easily be achieved using the Print Server, without altering the customer's original layout file. Of course, more complex and higher value design techniques can be achieved using an 'in-file' workflow by setting up documents with the desired effects embedded in the file.”

Leaving it to the specialists

Sometimes it just makes good sense to send out your digital embellishing. Lorimier, at Heidelberg West in Melbourne, supplies print finishing and embellishment to the printing and packaging industry. Lorimier provides foil stamping, embossing, debossing, laminating, spot UV varnishing, pattern gluing and all-over varnishing services.

Peter Johnston, Lorimier’s managing director, says the advantages of an offline specialist are numerous. “Jobs are performed to the highest standard by highly qualified and experienced specialist operators. The many and varied potential pitfalls and problems associated with this type of work are more likely to be avoided and overcome by specialist operators with dedicated equipment.

“Often print finishing and embellishment jobs require significant makeready times and do not run as quickly as does print. Running these jobs offline avoids slowing the printing process down and enables the most efficient utilisation of printing press capacity. A number of print finishing and embellishment processes often required on the one job are able to be performed under the one roof by a print finisher/embellisher – jobs such as  laminating, spot UV varnishing, foil stamping and embossing.

“Digital print often provides specific challenges such as movement in print and problems getting laminating film and foil to adhere effectively to the various toner-based inks used by different digital printers. With dedicated equipment and experienced operators, these inherent problems are able to be overcome.”

Darren Delaney, business development director at finishing specialist Allkotes, at Silverwater in Sydney and Mount Waverley in Melbourne, makes the point that digital finishing is no longer as much of a specialty as it was a few years ago because the issues that kept digital printing in its own corner of the bindery, so to speak, are vanishing.

There are, of course, distinguishing factors – one of the most noticeable is that digital sheets run lengthways through the machine, not crossways like litho, and there is no grip-and-lay. “When it comes to finer details, we can get a little bit of movement, and it’s well known that spot UV has a half-millimetre tolerance and that’s commercially acceptable. Nine times out ten that’s what the digital printer accepts and what their client accepts.”

Output from Indigos, iGens and NexPresses is now treated almost as if it was offset generated, says Delaney. “We’re sometimes not told whether a print job coming in is digital or offset – a few years ago that would have mattered, but not so much now. It means the job can be embellished on the same equipment used for offset.”

He gives three examples of premium embellishing on digitally printed stock – a calendar printed by standout Sydney digital specialty printer Carbon8 on an HP Indigo 7600 of which each page was printed on a different stock and Allkotes added a series of effects throughout, including spot and ultra coating and soft-metal film.

In conjunction with Digitalpress, Allkotes added a scratch-scent effect to digital print for a campaign, as well as thermo-chromatic inks that respond to finger pressure to become opaque and reveal a sub-layer. Digitalpress has also done soft-metal film work.

Blue Star DM prints scratch-tickets on its iGen and Indigo presses, with Allkotes adding a release varnish followed by an application of scratch coating before delivery to the client. The Blue Star work often includes a variable-data component, with tickets typically 20-up on a sheet and different information on each ticket, says Delaney.

Finishing of digital jobs now accounts for 15-20 percent of Allkotes’ work and is steadily climbing, he says. Commercial production printers, most with a litho background, understand time constraints and are able to factor in the outsourcing of work to finishing specialists.

Trade finishers have extended their partnership with the print industry to marketing finishing consumables that help print houses bring certain jobs inhouse. At Watermarx Graphics, an eight-year-old trade finisher in Sydney’s Brookvale, R&D is constantly evolving. Early last year, the company introduced plastic dies as an alternative to metal dies for short-run foil stamping. This year, Watermarx is launching CLIQX photopolymer dies for embossing to the greater printing industry, particularly for digital print and packaging.

Watermarx’s Angela O’Dea, who owns and works in the company in partnership with husband Alan Fawcett, tells ProPrint the idea for photopolymer embossing dies grew from the sheer tedium of  using magnesium dies, a process that was time consuming to produce top-quality results.

CLIQX dies have been extensively tested at Watermarx, where they are used under licence from its development partner company.  CLIQX will become commercially available to Australian print providers later this year.

“The advantages are that the dies can be made in minutes and produce a nice, sharp, clean emboss, with images that are a lot finer than with magnesium dies. Makeready time is literally minutes, even seconds, instead of around an hour for metal. Anyone who can lock up a diecutting forme , put matrixes on and diecut can do this,” she says.

Photopolymer dies provide fast turnarounds at a fraction of the cost of conventional dies. “It means any printer with either a platen or cylinder machine, whether they are digital or offset, can now emboss.”

Leading embellishment specialist Avon Graphics views short-run digital work as an opportunity rather than a challenge. Managing director Trevor Hone says while some inline innovations on digital presses have their role, much specialty work is offline, and printers might not be asked to perform that kind of finishing frequently, so investing in a particular piece of kit might not be the most cost-savvy way to produce it for their customers.

Much of what can be achieved digitally was not envisaged a couple of decades ago, he reflects – laminating, foiling and UV coating spring to mind – and at micro-volumes below 100. Hone says much of the embellishment done at Avon Graphics at its Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane facilities  is on equipment compatible with both digital and litho print

There are still plenty of traps for the unwary – another argument for leaving it to the specialists, says the Avon boss. Toner print likes to crack and generally digital stock likes to curl up with a good dose of heat transfer.  In turn, these bad habits create adhesion problems for foil stamping and laminating in all but the surest hands. Inkjet’s  performance is marginally better, he says.

Hone estimates that digital embellishing constitutes around 10 percent of Avon’s work but predicts the ratio will grow. Asked whether he thinks the cost of embellishing digital print is significantly higher than offset, he states: “No, not at all. It can be. What we [at Avon] have to do is run a lot of small jobs well to make money out of it. Set-up time is critical for us, we’ve got to set up very quickly.”

At PacPrint last year, Avon Graphics impressed when it partnered with Fuji Xerox to add effects to a booklet promoting Clear Dry Ink on the Xerox Color 800/1000. The embellishes included high-build UV, screen UV, foil stamping and hand-tooled, sculpted embossing. Hone says the company has had much positive feedback from the industry since that landmark demo.

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