Atlantic Zeiser – For many readers the name of Atlantic Zeiser probably means very little. This company is one of the major successes of this industry and one of the larger suppliers. It is headquartered in Germany with a turnover around €70 million ($105 million) and employees 400 people worldwide. It has 9 subsidiaries and 50 sales and service locations worldwide. It works in the areas of industrial marking and coding, security printing and speciality packaging. IT provides inkjet -printing modules to add onto other production equipment.
Its mission is to help industrial producers increase operating profits by solving the issue of frequently changing print contents on their products, packages and labels. It does this by employing highly efficient digital printing solutions that deliver offset-like quality and speed regardless of the substrate. In this it produces inline-printing modules and works in four areas. These are print engine hardware; ink chemistry; curing technology; and high-speed RIP technology. All of these technologies are developed in-house. At Ipex Atlantic Zeiser will launch its strategy called Industrial Digital Printing 2.0.
Atlantic Zeiser has a very broad range of 18 print engines using different suppliers’ print heads for use on a range of different substrates. The AZ Omega family is for single pass spot color printing with UV curable inks running at speeds up to 120 meters/min (393 ft/min) in widths up to 210 mm (8.25 ins) at resolutions up 720 dpi. New for Ipex is new high-technology white pigment ink. The AZ Gamma is a single pass CMYK plus white UV print engine with speeds up to 24 meters/min (78 ft/min) at virtual resolutions up to 1,060 dpi in widths up to 140 mm (5.5 ins).
A new engine range to be seen at Ipex is the AZ Delta family. This is available for both UV and aqueous inks and the engines are for single pass spot color operations. The resolution is up 600 dpi with 5 level grayscale with speeds up to 300 meters/min (985 ft/min) with aqueous inks and 200 meters/min (656 ft/min) with UV inks. This is available in widths of 105 mm (4.1 ins) or 210 mm (8.25 ins). This product is designed to add on to existing continuous feed flexo or offset presses and is seen as a direct competitor for the new Kodak S10 print heads (Stream technology).
Atlantic Zeiser develops and produces its own inks through its subsidiary Tritron that sells inks into a variety of markets. A new introduction into this area is the new aqueous inks with Bleed Control that are designed to work with standard substrates without the need for any pre-coating or pre-treatment. Atlantic Zeiser was also the first company to offer UV LED curable inks.
In the area of RIPs and workflow the company acquired the German specialist PostScript company SOFHA who is an Adobe source code development partner. At Ipex it will introduce PDF/VTx plus variable data that is an extended version of PDF/VT. This is based up the Adobe APPE 2.5 and SOFHA and Adobe are working together with a proposal for this to become an ISO standard.
At Ipex Atlantic Zeiser will also show their DigiLine products that are complete print systems. These are both sheet and web fed models for labels, flexible packaging, flat cartons, mail and transpromo and security printing. A new product is for printing both flat and three-dimension products where the unit automatically adjusts the print head height during printing.
EskoArtwork – The key new announcement for EskoArtwork was of the new Suite 10 of packaging software products. Suite 10 is new versions of all the company’s major software products of ArtPro, PackEdge, DeskPack and ArtiosCAD in the creation and back office areas and moving beyond prepress with integration of design, automation and brand management functionality. This included new functionality of taking 3D functionality into the area of quality assessment for online proofing. Suite 10 is also the merging of the company’s three server frameworks of BackStage, Nexus and Odystar into one solution, Automation Engine 10.
The demonstration of the new functionality of the Studio Toolkit that is included in a number of the software packages was the usual superb EskoArtwork demonstration. (Personally I don’t think any company does better more specifically targeted demonstrations in this whole industry than EskoArtwork) The Studio Toolkit was demonstrated running within Adobe Illustrator and was shown doing the design for a shrink-wrap package around a pack of six food cans, one of the most difficult package design jobs to handle.
This new unique capability literally saves hours of time in such work. It was then show how this can be visualized in 3D mode. The new functionality however was in how this could be used in an online proofing application within Adobe Acrobat Reader. Despite competition from other leading vendors there is still nothing that competes with EskoArtwork in total package creation and package solutions.
A new product from the company’s Kongsberg division is the XE-10 Fully Automatic Finishing system. This is targeted at the short run digital printing market for production of finished items as an alternative to dye cutting and other non-digital finishing systems. This uses the Kongsberg XE10 cutting table with and automatic feeder and stacker system. It is capable of handling 1,200 sheets per hour to deliver fully finished cut out products.
Enfocus – The EskoArtwork subsidiary will introduce at Ipex a new product to help those print customers that only deliver a PDF file for printing a few times each year and who would be unlikely to install an Enfocus PitStop product to provide clean certified PDF files. This new product is PitStop Connect and is sold to printers and publishers. PitStop Connect will produce Connectors that are delivered free of charge to the printers and publishers customers that supply them with PDF files.
The aim of a Connector that simply sits on a user’s desktop is to produce correction action lists, certified preflight profiles, to deliver files, add metadata, allow delivery on sign off even with errors, and to be branded in the name of the printer or publisher. PitStop Connect will cost between €3,999 to €4,999 to the printer or publisher but will be free to the end user. To operate first the Connector is dropped onto the user’s desktop. The user will then drop the PDF onto the Connector icon. This will instigate preflighting, an action list for corrections, certification and delivery to the printer or publisher only through FTP or directly to Switch.
Kodak – Most of what Kodak will show at Ipex has been announced already. Most of the interest will be centered upon the first public showing of the new Kodak Prosper inkjet printing platform. At the press event we had the chance to meet with the first customer for the Prosper 5000XL Color Press, Rotomail Italia, who will have their press installed after Ipex.
The main new item outlined by Kodak was the first of the next generation of thermal printing plates, this being the Trillian XP. This is a plate that requires no pre or post-baking, uses reduced chemistry, energy and water and produce less waste. It is compatible with existing plate processors. This is the first in a new line up of plate solutions.
In the packaging area Kodak has been having increasing success with its Flexcel NX system for high quality flexo plates. A new product in this area, the Kodak Flexcel Direct System is being unveiled at Ipex. The new system, which includes the imager, media and workflow from Kodak, features innovative new technology for direct laser engraving of flexo forms. The result is a solution for flat plate, plate on sleeve, or continuous sleeve applications that simplifies the plate making process, removes the need for chemical processing, and improves on-press performance. This system, while not offering the highest quality of the Flexcel NX System is ideal for many applications particularly in the round forms.
Kodak will show the Pipeline of Innovation that was the highlight of their recent Print09 stand, a 24-foot-long (7-meter-long) interactive digital display that features a continuous stream of visual images and information about each technology area. In addition, printed samples representing a variety of applications will be on display with embedded byte tags that, when placed on a display table, will activate a presentation showing how the piece was produced using KODAK Technologies.
