hot foil (gold) print

[smatros]

We would like to combine digital print with gold/silver hotfoil printing. Anyone doing this, the traditional way or something new is on the market? Your experience with anything similar?
I've seen at a traditional printer that they use also some kind of transparent hot foil to produce a kind of partial UV coating effect with it. Any idea about this?

All inputs are appreciated, we are just looking to expand our offer in the digital market with combining some traditional finishing methods.

 

[Internal_R&D_Analyst]

Therm-O-type makes a foil fuser you can acomplish this with. We have a few but do most the traditional hot stamp way on HBG Windmills, Kluges, Geitz, or cold foil with a 40 inch offset press.

The foil fuser process requires you print on a toner device and then run it thorough their machine and the toner melts and acts like glue sticking to the sheet only where the toner image is.

Thermography and Business Card Slitting Equipment Manufacturer - Therm-O-Type Corporation

Caslon LTD is the company you would talk with in the UK and I believe possibly the UK on this.

 

[che.c]

Sorry to jump on the bandwagon smatros but this seems like an amazing wee process!

Internal_R&D_Analyst how did you find out about this? No-one in the office has ever heard of it before.

Made a few phone calls and it seems to use the freedom foil process (lets you have a full colour background - much more akin to traditional foil blocking) you need to have a laminator.

That brings the cost up significantly for a basic set-up, however I was thinking - could you just run the special foil through a standard laminator?

Does anyone have any experience on this? No-one in the market near here is doing this and it could be a real go-er.

 

[smatros]

i agree it is an interresting thing, but it would be great to have some info from someone that is using it. I also wonder if someone knows the price for the unit or foils?

 

[che.c]

Seems you can get an FT-10 Junior for £1650-£1800 over here and the rolls are from £35 upwards. You have to phone for unit prices but they usually aint so cagey about having price of the rolls on the net.

 

[Internal_R&D_Analyst]

One of our locations has 4 of these. It works best to print one of two ways, print on your offset press and then through your toner device and then the foil fuser to get the gold, silver, red, etc. The alternative it to print the toner and then foil it and then offset or digital print after, this way being more costly if you waste a lot in set up and run as the foil is already on the sheet.

It's only flat and we do a lot of combination foil and embossing so that work stays the traditional hot stamp way.

We don't do any of the freedom foil process it changes the look by laminating the plastic to the sheet and raises the cost,I see this specific process as good just for proofs for things like packaging jobs.

Costs of foil fusing are about 1/2 of hot stamping, but again is only flat so for us is only a small portion of existing work.

It's been around for a little while (guessing over 5 years) I've seen it at graph expo's, IGAS, and Drupa.

 

[smatros]

The alternative it to print the toner and then foil it and then offset or digital print after, this way being more costly if you waste a lot in set up and run as the foil is already on the sheet.

Doesn't the foil peel off when you resubmit it to digital print / laser?

 

[che.c]

No apparently it can be overprinted without any issues.

Internal R&D - how is the reliability of these machines? Is there much wastage and bad image transfer or are they reasonably reliable? Does the freedom foil change the look of the print drastically - and in your opinion does it look better/worse/just different? Sorry to bombard you with questions but we're thinking of investing in one these and we're a small business so it's a reasonably large amount of money for us to put down! It seems to be very difficult to find anyone who has actually had experience of these machines in a production environment too.

 

[Internal_R&D_Analyst]

Che.c

You will need to do some playing around with temp and pressure for different stocks to figgure out what works the best. Sometimes you can get spots of foil transferring in non image areas. As far as the lam I would just call it different like a matte varnish has been applied almost. If you have a 4-color image and want foil on top of it I would probably hot stamp given that's an option. You can get samples from Therm-O-Type and I know they are at On Demand Expo and would assume Print 09.

To Smatros it works if you do it on the right devices to run it back through, I'll probably be shot if I tell you what ones and still might anyway for all that I've said.

 

[lfelton]

I agree that this looks like a cool twist on "ye olde" foil sticking to toner trick that copy shops have been using for donkey's years, but is it limited to a "cottage industry" booklet or flat sheet only environment?

If I understand it, the process is:

1) print whatever you want on substrate
2) laminate both sides of substrate
3) print area to be foiled on top of the laminate
4) put through a hot foil machine where the foil sticks to the toner (on top of the laminate)

The web site doesn't have a great deal of in-depth information, so I'd want to know:-

* Can the film be applied single sided on an automated line? If you've ever tried cutting out laminated sheets from a web "by hand" you'll know that's only practical with very small numbers. Also, you can't bind books with covers that are laminated both sides.

* Is this a permeable film so that it will lay flat on digitally printed book covers?

* Have they tested bursting, have they tested hinge adhesion?

* How on earth can you make these into cases for hardbacks (if it involves double sided sticky tape, I don't want to know the answer)!!

I'd love this to work, as this would be perfect for short run books, so I'm going to fire off these questions to Caslon tonight...

Hmmm... I wonder whether this foiling process would work with UV varnish instead of laminate. Now that really would be cool.

 

[smatros]

I wonder whether this foiling process would work with UV varnish instead of laminate. Now that really would be cool.

I've seen in a print house we sometimes work with... they use a special transparent foil with hot foiling technique to create spot / partial UV varnish effect, and it comes out pretty ok. Anyone familiar with something similar?

 

[che.c]

Internal R&D - Stamping's not really something I would want to get into, our customers are all about turn around (we're a digital only shop) so being able to quickly foil over a 4 colour image in house would be a great advantage. That's good to hear that the lam is a matte varnish, it's quite a popular finish for us anyway - send quite a lot out for lamination. The process being a bit ropy, needing adjustments etc is about what I expected but certainly sounds do-able.

lfelton - The one thing I know about the freedom laminate is that you can either use a double sided lamination or a peel-off backing sheet.

I don't know if any of you have seen these vids but are quite a nice visual demonstration.

FT-10 Foil Fuser

Freedom Foil Process

 

[smatros]

I'd love this to work, as this would be perfect for short run books, so I'm going to fire off these questions to Caslon tonight...

Hmmm... I wonder whether this foiling process would work with UV varnish instead of laminate. Now that really would be cool.

Let me know the answers please. We are always looking for low cost solution to add something special to our offer.

 

[Bondmaster]

Hundreds of answers come to mind. We produce laminators. Cheapest and simplest is to use a heated roller pouch machine with foil sheets. These have been around in Australasia for over 10 years. Machines cost say $400 to $900. Must be hot roller type - not a platen as is predominant in USA. Sheets of foil in all sorts of colours , clear gloss, irridescent, holographic are available. Offset sheet or what ever is put thru a toner printer on black only, then foil sheet placed on top and into a polyester sleeve and put thru laminator. Only good production wise for short run etc. say 100-120 per hour. But with no block to make or charge is used a fair bit down under. Quality can be patchy depending on how citical the recipient is and how good the heat control is on the laminator etc. Then you step up to dedicated devices using reels of foil as discussed prior to this message. Then onto unique foil devices that use no blocks and text and graphics can be computer generated on the fly to vinyl , leather, plastic and paper on items like dairies,book & report covers, calculators , luggage tags etc. They run in at $14000 to $16000 at a print area of 2.24" x 9.5" per image. Can get a version to do 3 ring binder & book splines as well. Finally onto full blown foiling which at times is easier contracted out.

Lamination -- matte -- gloss -- combinations -- Wow, another hundred questions. Been in it 30 years and maybe should retire a right a book on all the unknown added value tricks and devices we use.

 

[che.c]

Bondmaster, have you ever run this foil-tech roll through a laminator before? I take it from your last post you were talking about using sheets rather than rolls. I'm trying to find out if a laminator (terminology probably ain't right, I don't know much about lamination) that uses two rolls of stock and a heated pinch roller could be used for the foiling, as well as standard lamination - not all at the same time, obviously. Can you just put one roll through a laminator like that, instead of using it double sided? You seem to know what you're talking about, some info on it would be very much appreciated! I'm trying to get a lamination/foiling set-up for our digital print shop set up.

 

[Bondmaster]

Yes there are dual machines out there ( we also produce a range) that can laminated one side with say a ultra thin webs (1 to 1.2mil) of gloss or matte polypropylene to duplicate what the huge cantactors machines do, and then be used for two side lamination including encapsulation with thicker polyester films (anywhere from 1.3mil to 10mil - like a credit card). Just dawned on me , given the correct set up you could run rollstck foils thru some of these units a la Thermo-Type machines which are foil dedicated only. With that I'm all fired up to try it in next day or so. Will let you know. What sheet size output would you require? We have machines that go from say business card size upto 20" wide throught in this class. We also produce upto 60" and hi speed lines etc. We have a warehouse and tech in Indiana as well as NZ & Australia

 

[che.c]

If you would try out foil-tech on a normal laminator that would be great! We're UK based so working with SRA3 [450x320mm - roughly 17"x12"]. Well keen to have some in house lamination capability and one of those versatile machines sounds like the ticket.

 

[Bondmaster]

Foiling on toner

Foiling on toner

Have trialed a small amount of foil through one of our laminators . This MINIBOND is set for 1 & 2 side laminatinfg with light polypropylene or can encapsulate with heavier polyester films 2 sides. To see the trial go to You Tube and search for "Foiling on toner through the MINIBOND 0209" See what you think. We had unwanted laminate resin on the roller so output could have been 100% better if cleaned , but we had such little foil to play with we went ahead to just prove the mechanics of it worked.

 

[che.c]

Well, looks like FoilTech is due to be a consumables only manufacturer shortly! Thanks for trialing that, given the amount that we spend on lamination we're likely to be buying in a small laminator in the near future. Definitely gonna get some foil as well, it looks a goer.

It's a shame about the laminate resin on the output, but as you say, with a wee clean it would probably work a treat.

 

[GusG]

We have a Polydiam Digital Mk5 hot foiling machine that we are not using yet but do intend to start using in the very near future.
However, the Foiltech solution looks so much simpler and faster to use (we do have a hot roll laminator) though I do have a couple of questions:
1) Can we use any hot foil or must it be FoilTech? I am going to try later today on some foil we have lying around so I guess I will find the answer to that myself.
2) Is there any technique to foil on a full colour digital print without first laminating the base print?
3) Does anyone know if we can take a full colour offset print, then print the black toner on top to foil only that bit?
I'm very excited about this and right now my staff are busy cleaning our hot laminator