Established in 1985, CGS Publishing Technologies International GmbH is a global leader in color management, digital proofing and specially formulated media. Headquartered near Frankfurt (Germany), CGS also has operations in the United States, Japan and many other countries, as well as sales and support partners throughout the world.

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Quality Improvement with INK SAVER

By reducing ink, quality improvement is not possible, right? At first glance, most people will agree with this correlation. It’s unanimously believed that if you reduce the amount of ink the quality of the print will suffer. However, the opposite is true if you use the right tools as demonstrated here by the international STIEFEL Group.

Situated in Lenting, close to Ingolstadt, the company has 14 printing machines, 2 high-frequency welding towers, 4 guillotines and 3 laminators in their 5500m2 production hall.

Every day thousands of square meters of printed materials from giant fabric prints for flags, wall coverings, canopies and tablecloths, complex display banners and building wraps to foil printing for expo booths and vehicle wraps are produced. Direct printing to board and fleece wallpaper with imposing designs complete the STIEFEL portfolio.

This Upper Bavarian company also provides post-processing, delivery and assembly of the final product on site. Managing Director Bernhard Stiefel’s first priority is providing his customers with the best quality possible. Software from CGS gives him exactly that.

Just over a year ago, STIEFEL installed PRESS MATCHER with the INK SAVER module. “What’s most important in this solution is very clear to us, and that’s the quality improvement that we can achieve with it”, Bernhard Stiefel comments. “Printed results show considerably improved sharpness, they are noticeably more brilliant and edges are clearly defined” he said with satisfaction.

At first, he didn’t expect such incredible results. “We had already tried other ink-saving solutions, but none even came close to what we desired and this is why we were not convinced it was even possible. I was very positively surprised, because the results printed with ORIS Ink Saver even overachieved what CGS ORIS´ business partner, DRX Pack, had reported the software would deliver”, summarized Stiefel.

As well as the increase in quality, ink-saving was also outstanding. On average, the company is saving around 20 % in ink. For example on the Canon Colorado that‘s 22% in saved ink costs. On certain printing machines the ink saving was even greater.

Ink savings can depend on factors such as image design, printing substrate and the machine itself. STIEFEL has a wide range of equipment from DURST, HP, VUTek, Canon and SwissQPrint. “We save most on the foil machines where we see up to 35%”, according to Stiefel.

Over and above the quality and cost-saving benefits the Managing Director praised the ease of integration of the software with his existing workflow.

As well as quality improvement and less ink usage, the INK SAVER module brings other unexpected benefits along with it. Because there is less ink on the substrate, drying time is reduced so that the production process can be speed up and the printer freed up for additional customer projects.

(Photo Credit: CGS)

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Spot colors are an integral part of packaging printing. But their use brings certain disadvantages. Read how you can resolve many problems easily.

Process optimization with X GAMUT

Online ordering today allows for multiple design iterations with personalized typeface selections and a host of special colors. Even product packaging can be turned into an individual “Limited Edition” with just a few clicks.

Personalized muesli packs, shower gels with pictures, or drink cans with logo and special themes for the perfect look at the next company function, can all be produced this way.

Stefan Harder makes many of these items possible. Under the names “Labelprint24” and “Partylables24” his company offers his customers complete packaging solutions.

The customer hardly realizes how complex the process is to produce these many individual wishes. But already, since the founding of his company in 2010, the CEO and Owner of Harder-Online GmbH has continually worked on perfecting the ideal job workflow, with the mantra of intelligent job and process automation.

A decisive piece of the jigsaw in Stefan Harder’s cleverly thought out system is now provided by the color management software X GAMUT.

If a customer, for example, designs his particular muesli can on mymuesli.com all the job files and data are automatically uploaded from there, overnight, into Harder-Online’s system, checked for printability (also automatically) and prepared for printing.

And then comes the decisive questions of any online printer: On which press should we now print for the best possible result? Which color space are we looking for? How can we reproduce spot colors accurately with our ink sets?

X GAMUT delivers all answers. The software decides which available press will produce the best result, converts the print data and sends it to the selected press so that the job can be produced.

Even the printing substrate, short delivery times and job costs are taken into consideration. In the case of mymuesli the whole process, from data input to the finished product, takes just 12 hours.

Stefan Harder and CGS ORIS have worked together for over five years. It all began with PRESS MATCHER, used to calibrate his complete fleet of presses - so-called “cross-fleet color management”, to bring all presses to a consistent print result and a common standard. In addition to his two workhorses, Screen Truepress Jet L350 UV printers, Harder has, among others, an HP Indigo WS6800 and an HP Indigo 12000 in operation.

“Stefan Harder was already an advocate of the ‚X-Gamut‘ idea. We worked earlier together on how special colors could be separated in more than four colors” explains Bernd Rückert, CGS ORIS Product Marketing Manager.

“We are very happy that we made a contribution to press optimization at harder-online with X GAMUT. It’s very nice to see how perfectly and easily the product can be integrated into an existing workflow and there be key function in the order process”, he continues.

(Photo credits: Harder-Online GmbH)

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