Digital Recycled / Speciality Stocks

[Ynot_UK]

To date, our typical work has mostly been using regular coated white stocks and uncoated stocks, white and tints and occasionally synthetics.
We have a new customer for cards & notelets who only wants recycled substrates and likes 'Arts & Crafts'/Rustic papers like Ivory Flecked, etc.

I have today received the Fedrigoni Digital swatch book - all the substrates contained are certified for Indigo and papers such as Woodstock Betulla/Bianco look to fit the requirement perfectly. Providing they will produced great results on our KM C4080.

I'm after any tips/pitfalls/etc. from members with experience of speciality stocks on digital - whilst understanding no results are certain until tested, as a rule of thumb, it is good to say that if it's certified for Indigo, it's got a good chance of working on any modern dry toner production press?

Also any tips from other KM shops as to paper catalogue settings, etc. would be useful.

 

[Ynot_UK]

any thoughts, guys?

 

[Stickman42]

I can't offer much, but my experience with Indigo certified paper has been good when using some of the more plain types (coated text and cover). with specialty papers, I usually communicate with the manufacturer about the likelihood of an Indigo stock being laser compatible. As an example, Hazen paper makes an Indigo holographic stock that's been requested by a client twice in the past. I've been told it's not going to work on my Iridesse, and I wound up either farming it out or passing on the job.

 

[jwheeler]

I've never based the reliability of a stock for dry toner presses on their certification for HP Indigo's because they use completely different processes and ink/toner. As explained on HP's site here, their ink is "pigments that are encapsulated in a special resin, forming electrically charged particles that are dispersed in a carrier liquid."

In the catalog from our paper provider, KellySpicers, they have a section specifically for digital stocks which will have an indicator for "Dry Toner/Laser Compatible". That's what we want for our Konicas. The majority of the time, we can confidently order that stock knowing it will work. We just input the proper GSM setting, indicate if it's coated or not, and we're good to go. The only stocks that require a little more intervention are heavily textured stocks. Luckily, the newer KM's have presets in the paper setup window for textured stocks.

 

[namelessentity]

Indigo is different enough where I don't really trust that it will work on all laser equipment.
Recycled paper tends to not take toner as well, so I usually have to make voltage adjustments or the image will look starved or have a lot of mottling. Sometimes nothing improves it, so be sure to get samples from your supplier before you commit to a major run.

 

[Ynot_UK]

Luckily, the newer KM's have presets in the paper setup window for textured stocks.

@jwheeler I was experimenting with the textured stock setting yesterday on some 285GSM and 320GSM Fedrogoni samples received and noted on the C4080, the "textured" paper type disables the use of de-curling settings in the relay unit. The job is single sided and did need (-5) de-curl to come out flat, I changed the paper type to "fine" to achieve this.

Presumably KM deem the de-curl functionality potentially damaging to textured substrate? I can imagine extreme decurl, either concave or convex, could disfigure some heavily textured papers.