Sinapse develops world’s first cloud-based print simulator

Paris-based software developer Sinapse has launched its Suite 8 print simulator, its first print simulator to be accessible from the cloud.

Suite 8 is available globally, but its cloud version is not accessible in China, due to firewall issues, according to Sinapse managing director Thierry Mack.

It is intended to be used as a training tool for schools and printing businesses to teach students and apprentices about the various types of print cost effectively. 

Mack said so far around 100

Staff Writer, 15 September 2016

Sun Chemical to acquire Flint’s European gravure ink business

Sun Chemical is to acquire Flint Group’s European publication gravure ink business. Sun Chemical said the acquisition, which will include the transfer of all products, inventory and technology relating to Flint Group’s European publication gravure products, reflects its continued dedication to supporting this sector. The value of the deal was undisclosed.

Sun Chemical chief marketing officer and board member Felipe Mellado said: “The acquisition of Flint Group’s publication gravure ink

Staff Writer, 15 September 2016

Century old ink maker goes bust, closes shop

Imex Printing Inks B.V. in Maastricht (Limburg) has been declared bankrupt by the court in Den-Haag. The insolvency number of this case is F.09/15/101.

The Maastricht-based firm has a history dating back a century to the foundation of pigment maker Ten Horn Chemistry in 1916, but has changed ownership a number of times in recent years.

It manufactured heatset inks using what was descri-bed as a “unique” extrusion process, and supplied customers across Europe as well as in South America and

Staff Writer, 15 September 2016

Canon outlines plans for Egypt

As part of its drive to support local businesses Canon has outlined its growth plans for the Egypt market while announcing the launch of its new PIXMA G-Series printers under the recently formed Canon Central and North Africa (CCNA) business division.

Speaking about their partnerships in the region,  Somesh Adukia, B2C sales director, Canon Central and North Africa (CCNA) said: “As the first-point for market feedback, our partners provide us valuable insights on customers. By listening to them

Staff Writer, 15 September 2016

Kodak to use invisible ink for anti-counterfeiting venture

Kodak and Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba are behind a new start-up that aims to fight the e-commerce fake product market using invisible, digitally traceable ink markers.

Launched recently, Eapeiron will provide technology that will enable brand owners, manufacturers and retailers to protect their products from entering the ‘grey market’.

The new ‘encryption technology’ for e-commerce has been developed and manufactured by Kodak at its Rochester, New York laboratories and is based on the

Staff Writer, 15 August 2016

Sun Chemical introduces its new products at Glasstec 2016

Sun Chemical presented new products at Glasstec 2016.  Among the new launches are a range of glass decoration solutions including organic inks, spray coatings, glass preparation products and cold end coating solutions from its  SunVetro brand.

The SunVetro portfolio of organic inks offers a choice of UV curing and conventional solvent-based products. These are available in standard mixing colours as well as a wide range of special effect finishes including frosted, etched effects

Staff Writer, 15 August 2016

Mimaki launches new colour collections

Mimaki announces the release of the “Artista Textile Colour Collection for Fluorescence” for textile printing on their website.  This colour collection contains 520 colours for sublimation transfer printing including the fluorescent ones like yellow and pink, that enhance visible impact and colour brightness for sports/fashion apparels and interior fabrics.  The printing colour can be specified by selecting from the newly installed swatches in Adobe Illustrator or CorelDRAW. 

An image file

Staff Writer, 15 August 2016

GMC integrates with DocuSign

GMC Software  integrated DocuSign’s eSignature and Digital Transaction Management (DTM) platform into its GMC Inspire CCM solution to help enterprise customers accelerate their digital transformations. With DocuSign, organizations of every size, industry and geography can make every approval, decision, workflow and signature 100 percent digital for faster speed to results, increased security and compliance, lower cost and a great end user experience.

“We are proud to partner with DocuSign as

Staff Writer, 15 August 2016

Roland unveils fluorescent ink colours for dye sublimation

Roland DG has released a new fluorescent ink range for its wide-format Texart dye-sublimation printers suitable for sports and fashion textiles.

The ink, made for its Texart XT-640 and RT-640 kit, was developed specifically for dye-sublimation transfer printing for sportswear, fashion, soft signage, decor and promotional merchandise. 

The new inks, fluorescent pink (Fp) and yellow (Fy), can be combined with Roland DG’s Texart process ink colours to produce hundreds of fluorescent

Staff Writer, 18 July 2016

Epson strengthens textile push with Robustelli buy

Epson has strengthened its position in the burgeoning industrial digital textile segment with the acquisition of Italian digital printer manufacturer Robustelli.

Epson said that as well as broadening the global reach of Robustelli-built printers, the deal was part of a strategy to accelerate the development of a broader range of its own portfolio of inkjet textile devices. Its range currently consists of the SureColor SC-F series of dye-sub printers – headed by the 1.6m-wide SC-F9200

Staff Writer, 18 July 2016

Adobe’s PDF print engine 4

Adobe has announced the availability of the fourth version of Adobe PDF Print Engine (APPE 4), Adobe’s high-speed, high-fidelity print platform used by the leading print equipment manufacturers, and running in more than 150,000 print operations around the world. As the fastest and most reliable PDF rendering technology, APPE 4 will deliver new performance efficiencies and breakthrough color features to extend Adobe’s market-leading print technology. APPE 4 will enable printers to increase

Staff Writer, 18 July 2016

MagnaColours unveils Reflective screen inks

Water-based ink manufacturer MagnaColours has launched its new Reflective range of toxin-free inks.

    The release follows on from the launch of Magna’s environmentally friendly range of inks last April. 

    The range, which is comprised of MagnaPrint Reflective SB, Reflective Clear, Reflective Crystal Clear, Reflective 3R Black and Reflective 3R Silver, is mainly for use on fashion garments, sportswear and some textiles. It is compatible with all screen printers.

   Managing director

Staff Writer, 18 July 2016

Agfa Graphics launches basic Advantage N platesetters

Agfa Graphics is introducing a series of “affordable” engines that focus on CTP technology for newspaper web-offset printing.

   Advantage N Essentials is based on the Advantage N, yet is a more basic series of CTP engines for newspaper pre-press, according to the company.

   Depending on the degree of automation that printers need, they can choose between the semi-automatic Advantage N-eSA or the fully automated Advantage N-eTR.

   Agfa said the Advantage N platesetter range offered

Staff Writer, 28 June 2016

Enfocus’s PitStop 13 update 2 will expand preflight possibilities

Enfocus announces that the latest version of its PDF quality control software, PitStop 13 update 2, will be released on Monday 30th of May. This release will include customer-driven enhancements that give users in a variety of markets the ability to preflight even the most complex PDFs. The features in PitStop 13 update 2 will also include support for a new upcoming industry standard, new packaging preflight functionality, updated Pantone libraries and improvements to preflight

Staff Writer, 28 June 2016

CHILI Publish, Ricoh join Ghent Workgroup

CHILI publish and Ricoh have announced their decision to join the Ghent Workgroup.

The Ghent Workgroup, formed in June 2002, is an international assembly of industry associations and suppliers from across Europe and the United States. The Ghent Workgroup’s objective is to establish and disseminate process specifications for best practices in graphic arts workflows.

Kevin Goeminne, CEO of CHILI publish, commented: “We are really proud to join the Ghent Workgroup who has done some important

Staff Writer, 28 June 2016

Toyo Ink joins programme

X-Rite and its subsidiary Pantone announced Toyo Ink has joined the Pantone-LIVE Accredited Partner Program.  Toyo Ink is part of a group of international partners and becomes the first PantoneLIVE accredited ink manufacturer in Japan.

“We are extremely proud to become an Accredited Ink Manufacturer partner for PantoneLIVE,” said Takashi Yamauchi, general manager, planning department, corporate planning division, Toyo Ink. “PantoneLIVE revolutionizes the way colour is communicated and ensures

Staff Writer, 28 June 2016

Xaar unveils its new family of printheads for industry

Xaar has unveiled its new 1003 family of printheads, which are targeted at a range of industrial printing applications.  

The inkjet head developer said the introduction of the new printheads was in line with its 2020 vision – which it outlined in its year-end results last week – and reiterated its commitment to investing significantly in research and development.

The new printheads are aimed at applications including ceramic tile decoration, labelling, direct-to-shape and other packaging

Staff Writer, 18 May 2016

Highcon premieres three new machines ahead of Drupa launch

Highcon has unveiled three new machines it will launch at Drupa that it said will open up digital cutting and creasing to new markets. Ranging from entry-level to “top-of-the-line” highly specced production capability, the Israel-headquartered manufacturer said the new products will benefit a range of print businesses.

All three machines are based on Highcon’s core cutting and creasing technology. The $1.5m Highcon Beam enables digital cutting and creasing for mainstream production and has a

Staff Writer, 18 May 2016

Esko has announced upgrades to software

Announcing upgrades to its software, Esko has relaunched them under the umbrella brand name “Esko Software Platform”.

   Enhanced features include more software modules made available as Software as a Service (SaaS) and subscriptions; improved 3D support, especially when viewing objects in WebCenter and on mobile devices; A new Content Management module for WebCenter; ArtPro+, a totally new platform-independent native PDF prepress editor; new tools and libraries for multi-part POP design in

Staff Writer, 18 May 2016

PACKZ users to get software

GMG has announced that it is well on its way toward offering OpenColor colour separation technology within Hybrid Software’s PACKZ label and packaging editor and workflow. Visi-tors to drupa will be able       to see how the multichan-nel profiling software fits  within PACKZ.

Packaging is noted for print projects that include a large number of process and spot colours. 

The integration with GMG OpenColor will allow PACKZ to use accurate colour profiles available, allowing PACKZ to use the

Staff Writer, 18 May 2016

HP builds Oneflow technology into ambitious new PrintOS

HP has set itself a bold goal of “reinventing print production” with PrintOS, a new cloud-based production environment that will be part of its Drupa showcase.

Simon Lewis, business director HP’s graphics solutions business, described PrintOS as “a print production operating system for print service providers” (PSPs) involving a suite of tools and a set of apps.

It runs apps developed by HP and by third parties, and can also run applications developed by customers. Lewis said that in mixed

Staff Writer, 14 April 2016

Avery launches new digital wall film with 3 different textures

Avery Dennison Graphics  announced the launch of a new digital wall film portfolio, including three new textured permanent wall vinyls: Canvas, Stone and Stucco.  

The non-textured MPI 8000 Wall Film series are digitally printable with solvent, eco/mild solvent, latex and UV curable inks. Unprinted, the textured and non textured wall graphics films are durable up to four years said the manufacturers.

“The new Avery Dennison Digital Wall Films portfolio allows customers to create dynamic

Staff Writer, 14 April 2016

SPGPrints unveils new sublimation inks

SPGPrints has launched its new range of Nebula sublimation inks at FESPA Digital 2016, held between 8th-11th March, in Amsterdam.

The new SPGPrints Nebula Sublimation ink set combines bright, sparkling colours with the deep black available in the market. The new sublimation inks add to the Nebula range that includes Nebula Direct Disperse inks (launched at FESPA Digital, Munich), and Nebula Reactive HD inks, (launched at FESPA, Cologne).

SPGPrints develops and manufactures its own inks at

Staff Writer, 14 April 2016

Kiian reveals dye-sub inks

Kiian Digital displayed its entire range of 81 dye-sublimation colours at Fespa Digital.  From its range of specially-designed 12 inks, Kiian said printers can create the most comprehensive gamut of high-quality colours available for sublimation printers, for use across textile and rigid substrates alike.

The K-One ink for the Kyocera inkjet printhead, aims at high quality and productivity for industrial production while the Digistar AIR ink formulation is compatible with Ricoh piezo-electric

Staff Writer, 14 April 2016

Luminescence reformulates its affected thermochromic inks

Security inks manufacturer Luminescence has reformulated some of its thermochromic (heat-reactive) inks to comply with new regulations that came into effect recently.

A new classification for formaldehyde (CAS 50-00-0) introduced on 1st January has made any ink mixture that contains levels of 0.1% or more of formaldehyde subject to the EuPIA (European Printing Ink Association) Exclusion List.

These guidelines ensure that inks are both safe to use, by printers and end users, and safe to

Staff Writer, 15 March 2016

Mimaki includes light black to its portfolio

Manufacturer of wide-format inkjet printers and cutting plotters for the sign/graphics, textile/apparel and industrial markets, Mimaki has announced that light black ink will be added to the range of spot colours, offered by its SB410 sublimation ink products. The light black ink will be available from February 2016.

“These new inks, developed by Mimaki’s reliable technologies, add value to finished products,” states Mike Horsten, general manager marketing EMEA. “The light black ink prevents

Staff Writer, 15 March 2016

Heidelberg fires up its digital product line rebrand

Heidelberg has restructured its digital printing portfolio with a digital product line rebrand.  The manufacturer, which will be presenting the industry’s digitised future under the motto “Simply Smart” at Drupa, has standardised its entire digital printing portfolio with the ‘Fire’ product branding.

The Primefire 106 B1 industrial inkjet press is the first new product to adopt the name and a number of existing products have been renamed.

The company’s Linoprint CP and CV digital printers

Staff Writer, 15 March 2016

Flint Group announces the launch of its ‘lightweight’ rotec sleeve

Flint Group has launched rotec, a lightweight sleeve for conventional plate mounting with adhesive tapes that it said boasts weight savings of 40% compared with standard sleeves.

Rotec is billed as a new generation of hard-coated sleeves that will meet a range of customers’ requirements in the mid-to-wide-web and pre-print sectors.

The technology enables users to achieve shorter and easier press set-ups, manage missing adapter configurations and handle maximum weight limits for components

Staff Writer, 15 February 2016

Epson to expand its SureColor SC-P series with faster addition

Epson has unveiled the latest addition to its SureColor SC-P series, the 1.62m-wide (64in) SC-P20000. The machine, which prints at speeds of up to 17.5sqm/hr, is designed for commercial printers, copy shops, photo labs and high street photo outlets. It can be used to produce high-quality large-format POS, short-term outdoor and interior signage, exhibition and display graphics, promotional graphics and photographs. The device will be shown at Fespa Digital in Amsterdam from 8th to 11th March

Staff Writer, 15 February 2016

Ricoh will launch eco-friendly AR latex inks

Ricoh is launching its own aqueous resin (AR) latex ink for the Ricoh Pro L4100 series of large format printers at FESPA Digital, Amsterdam, 8 to 11 March, to address the demands of its fast-growing sign and display graphics customer base. 

“We’ll demonstrate how the new eco-friendly, durable, latex ink enhance productivity and image quality,” says Jacques van Wyk, COO of Ricoh SA. “The aqueous resin ink delivers sharper and richer colour on a wider range of substrates. It dries faster and

Staff Writer, 15 February 2016