Kevin Karstedt and Tony Karg
Our first stop on Day 2 was a visit to Fujifilm Booth where we met fellow Tweeter, Tony Karg (@TonyKarg). It was good to put a face to the tweets and have Tony show us the very interesting new B2 inkjet digital folding carton press based on their Jet Press 720 but this is a press designed specifically for Folding Cartons applications. The Jet Press line uses their own Dimatix print heads and inks, a point Tony makes as a strong point for Fujifilm. The samples I saw were quite nice. The system is slated for a 2013 release…seems to be a trend here…
Screen’s Truepress JetSX, is the only one of the “new breed” of presses that is ready to be installed today. Although not designed for packaging applications the press can handle board up to 24 pt with a CMYK water based inks. It will be interesting to see if the system gets traction in the Carton Sector, at 1,620 sheets per hour it could have some short run effectiveness.
FFEI
We then visited the FFEI booth to see their joint venture with Nilpeter for the Labels and Flexible market. The unit on display was a total digital model which will be sold either by FFEI or Nilpeter depending on geographic location. This unit has a CMYK digital ink set plus a fifth unit for digital white. The system uses the Xaar 1001 heads which FFEI says have a 5 year life expectancy – with UV inks and inner pinning the print samples were impressive.
Highcon Euclid
Most interesting today was a stop at HighCon, a new company with a digital die cutting system for Cartons. The HighCon Euclid uses lasers to cut the board and a special compound to make the creases. This addresses the issue with digital that lasers cannot crease. Currently in Beta, the system will be “ready for primetime” later this year. The HighCon booth got a lot of attention which tell me they are addressing a need in the carton market that is being pressed for short run efficiencies. The company sees their system going in shops that have short run needs with or without digital printing.
