Esko featured its fully-featured super-wide digital finishing system, the Kongsberg C60, at Graphics of the Americas. The event took place from 26-28 February 2015 at the Miami Beach Convention Centre.
The Kongsberg C60 is a 3.2-metre table designed to keep up with faster, wider printers and cutting and finishing substrates up to 160.02cm x 312.42cm (63″ x 126″). Esko also demonstrated preproduction software for both packaging and wide format applications.
Jon Giardina, President, Esko Americas explained, ‘While Graphics of the Americas attracts attendees from a wide geographic area, we still find two factors that are common to everyone. First, we find that print providers are still exploring diversification into new areas such as wide format and package printing. We also find that companies continue to invest in tools that will increase production efficiency and, ultimately, profitability. Esko has an exceptional background in these areas, and can offer helpful hardware, software and consultative services.’
One of the most noticeable new features is the innovative composite traverse technology that provides the fastest throughput along with the highest quality and precision in cutting and routing. It provides the highest versatility for all sign, display and packaging applications.
The model can work with 160.02cm (63″) long x 312.42cm (126″) wide materials to accommodate today’s large format printing sizes, and can cut on a variety of substrates, including corrugated, folding carton, flute, Gatorfoam, Foamcore, Sintra, and textile and magnet rolls, among others. Accompanying these solutions within a complete ‘design to print to cut’ workflow is the Esko i-cut Suite.
Colour consistency is critical in brand recognition. Defining accurate brand and spot colour standards is the first step in maintaining consistency. Esko Colour Engine enables colour management across the packaging and print supply chain, allowing users to successfully manage brand colour expectations.
Automation Engine serves as the heart of any prepress production operation. It is a modular workflow server with dynamic workflows that are easy to set up and operate. It enables exceptional workflow automation with tight quality control. Automation Engine comes with extensive business system (MIS, ERP) integration capabilities and is highly scalable. It helps organise and centralise job data storage graphical specifications like barcode, inks, RIP options, step and repeat data, colours to be used, etc, as well as job metadata: its link to order ID, due date, customer info, customer service rep contacts, among others. Centralised information reduces operator intervention thus increasing quality, reducing errors and driving cost out of the process.
Structural design and graphic design integration eliminates costly mistakes downstream in the workflow. ArtiosCAD is the world’s most popular structural design software for packaging design. With dedicated tools specifically designed for packaging professionals for structural design, product development, virtual prototyping and manufacturing, ArtiosCAD increases productivity throughout the company. ArtiosCAD is also an ideal product for all corrugated, folding carton and display designers. ArtiosCAD Enterprise provides a complete packaging management solution. All necessary assets are centralised in a private, corporate database in the cloud, providing a secure web-accessible database. It enables dynamic on-line collaboration between design groups.
