Minuteman in Kings Lynn has taken delivery of its third Xerox Iridesse, this time choosing a six-colour rather than the five-colour version it already has.
the investment will relieve pressure on the first machines, will provide resilience and with additional gold and silver toners along with white and neon pink will expand the range of products the business can offer customers.
“We had not been interested in the silver and gold options previously,” says studio manager Dan Roberts. “Now it’s a new service we can offer and something that fills a gap since we moved out of litho in 2013.”
Since then, he explains, digital has not been able to replicate PMS Orange 021. “We could match it in litho, but it is virtually impossible with digital,” he says. No longer. By using the neon pink the press can achieve colours that were previously beyond the gamut of the toner press.
“And white gives us the opportunity to print on coloured paper and to replace screen printing. We print a lot of window stickers on clear film which had to be screen printed before. Now we can print short runs because we can achieve the same impact with the new Iridesse.”
The company retains a range of foiling systems that range from conventional hot foils to sleeking with a Matrix 370 Metallic laminator. And while the inline metallic colours may not match the analogue offline processes, the advantage of inline digital production is part of a technology trend. “Inline embellishment is increasing in demand as people become aware of what is possible and see the samples. Most finishing techniques have always lent themselves to litho, now with sleeking and cutting tables like the Veloblade we can finish jobs that we don’t have massive runs for.
“The first Iridesse had clear toner. It was not the same as UV spot varnish, but customers were happy to make the compromise if it meant they could have short runs of enhanced impact business cards rather than having to order more than they needed.”
The company installed its first two Iridesses in 2017, replacing an iGen. “That was a fantastic quality machine, a hungry beast that was suited to relatively long runs of a job. Bt we produce hundreds or thousands of little runs each day and that chopping and changing between jobs did not suit the iGen as well as it does the Iridesse,” says Roberts.
Now thanks to the additional toners, Minuteman can produce even more types of work that previously it could not touch. “We like the long sheet capability on the Iridesse. It’s just a small thing that we had not really thought about. But it allows us to say Yes a lot more.”
