Left to right, front row: Darren Carlson – CEO; Robert Kwakenat – pressroom manager; EarlGuinter – business development manager; Dan Dallum – president. Back row: Doug Mohagen –general manager; and Jeanne Brewer – controller.
How can we differentiate our printing and packaging from our competitors? That’s the most frequently asked question that Carlson Print Group (CPG) receives from its current accounts and potential customers. It’s a request that Carlson’s managers take seriously and work diligently to provide a satisfactory outcome. And in the past year, the CPG team is able to offer a greater variety of new solutions that showcase the company’s award-winning expertise.
It was 18 months ago when the CPG decided to invest in a new press. During the discussion, its management team kept their customer’s recurring question top-of-mind. They considered which features would produce inline eye-catching, tactile special effects that would be the most appealing for its well-known nationwide brand customers. To set itself apart from competition, the company chose LED-UV and double coaters to utilize multiple print techniques, including gloss and matte finishes, soft touch, rough or raised textures, cold foil, and holographic effects.
In partnership with Koenig & Bauer, CPG invested in a new Rapida 106 – an eight-color press with a double coater — that elevates the Eden Prairie, MN printer’s capabilities with cutting-edge technology. After one year of operating the new press, Carlson’s team continues to dream up new ways to show its customers the multitude of innovative, eye-catching print techniques that it can produce with the new press.
“Our pressroom now offers an improved press configuration that delivers eight inks along with a double coater producing our proprietary Colour Foil and Cast & Cure applications all in one pass,” says Darren Carlson, CEO, Carlson Print Group. “Traditionally, combining treatments requires the piece to be run multiple times through the press. Now our customers can choose from multiple treatments in one pass, saving valuable time and reducing costs. The ability to explore more flexible options opens up endless creative possibilities while offering greater flexibility and control. We’re able to discuss with them the advantages of these various print techniques. Working together, we can now demonstrate how innovative thinking along with a host of potential special effects can bring a box to life.”
The Rapida 106 is equipped with a state-of- the-art color control system. This system allows each job to come up to the desired color immediately and maintain perfect color throughout the production run. It ensures that each of CPG’s customer’s projects look consistent from beginning to end on every shelf around the country. An in-line color control measures every sheet and controls every 10th sheet. It also greatly reduces waste and makeready time. This enables CPG to produce the widest variety of print applications and offer solutions to their customers to ensure their product differentiates themselves in the crowded marketplace.
To take advantage of those special effects, Carlson specified that its Rapida 106 be equipped with two modules from Eagle Systems: one for cold foil applications and the other for Cast ‘n Cure applications. Applications include packaging, posters, comic book covers, and trading cards that use embellishments to add even more collectability.
The press is equipped with two modules from Eagle Systems.
A cold foil unit is installed at the second tower of the Rapida 106 while a second separate Eagle Casting unit is installed on a final station of the press to apply Cast & Cure. This allows CPG to apply cold foil, four-color lithography plus PMS, and Cast & Cure all in one pass at full press speeds. Both module systems are run inline in one pass on press providing value-added services to CPG’s customers, enhance its quality, and satisfy customer demands. These modules provide CPG with the ability to provide special effects and enhancements for their customers.
“The opportunities allow us to apply different embellishments/tactile coatings all in one pass,” added Rod Franson, technical sales manager, Carlson Print Group. “This has created a higher quality finished product, and improved efficiencies at a more competitive price.”
To better demonstrate the various creative possibilities to its customers, CPG built a set of demonstration boxes, each featuring the same striking image of a woman’s face produced with various combinations of coatings and techniques that can be applied in one press pass. Box One displays the traditional print method; Box Two shows the dynamics of two coatings; Box Three includes soft-touch coating; Box Four takes creativity to a whole new level showcasing CPG’s Cast & Cure prismatic effects; and Box Five combines multiple print techniques such as coatings, texture, light, and touch to highlight all of the elements into one piece.
The CPG team also equipped the new Rapida with a full drying package including LED lamps that reduces power consumption, can print on many substrates such as plastic, decrease drying time, and eliminates distortion.
“When using LED-UV there is less heat introduced into the materials which substantially reduces the distortion of the material, particularly plastics,” explains Earl Guinter, business development manager. “LED-UV also improves curing time, which virtually eliminates wait time going to the next operation. The press is also fitted with traditional UV, which gives us the flexibility to tailor to specific applications, like some specialty coatings, where traditional UV is better suited over LED-UV.”
Currently the Carlson team is working closely with its R&D team in the new area of security/fraud prevention. Carlson believes that the solution lies with its combined foil and Cast & Cure products. “Each and every day we find new products and solutions for our customers on our new Rapida 106 press,” says Carlson. “It provides numerous benefits for our customers, including a higher throughput of sheets per hour, the flexibility to tailor it to specific applications, ability to run a variety of substrates including plastics, and reduced makeready time. It is exactly what we set out to do. It’s certainly a game-changer for our business.”
