HOW'D WE PRINT THIS?: Long Haul Metallic Ink Effects

Graphic Arts Monthly this month showcases its second MetalFX (MFX) cover: this one printed heatset web offset. (Our August 2007 MFX cover was printed sheetfed.) Last October, Canadian mega-printer/publisher Transcontinental was among the first in North America to offer MFX on a web press. Its RBW Graphics catalog and magazine plant, Owen Sound, Ontario, ran the cover on a Heidelberg Web 8.

U.K.-based MetalFX Technology Ltd. develops the software that specified the metallic color matches. The firm adapted the specification system to the unique demands imposed by flash drying in web presses. The speeding webs mean that metallic pigment particle size needs to be as small as possible. Also, metallic inks tend to emulsify much faster on heatset web presses, partly due to the short-roller ink distribution.

Now that MFX can be used for longer print runs, new opportunities are open for catalog and magazine publishers. Showing all stripes of the metallic range—more than 600 colors—it can simulate the look of highly polished aluminum housings and copper windings (see gears on front cover) and does so without mixing separate batches for each color. (The back-cover ad employs MFX as well.)

“We’re getting more customer inquiries,” says Catherine del Vecchio, marketing manager of Transcontinental’s Catalog & Magazine Group, “asking us to apply these inks on metal products like cars and computers, or to make their covers shine and look different.”

She says one publisher compares MFX to Blu-ray DVDs: People notice something different—they just don’t know what it is. The color technology is cost-effective, too. “A multitude of metallic colors can be added for one price, similar to a fifth color,” notes del Vecchio.

Paper used during MFX print runs should be white and not too porous, so as not to absorb the microscopic aluminum Metalure platelets developed by Eckart. Glossy and satin stocks are preferred: for this project, 100-lb. Sappi Opus Gloss Text. To prevent dense ink coverage from rubbing off, outside covers were UV coated.

GAM senior art director Anne LoCascio used a prepress plug-in to add the Silvercoat layer, which is laid down first in the MFX sequence. Transparent CMYK inks then are applied over the metallic base.

Transcontinental offers sheetfed MFX at its Yorkville-O’Keefe direct-marketing plant in Toronto; the Litho Acme commercial plant in Montreal; and the Interglobe book plant in Beauceville, Quebec (for covers). In the U.S., there are nearly 200 MFX certified sheetfed printers and three web printers have licenses: Hoechstetter Printing/RR Donnelley, Pittsburgh; Quad/Graphics, Saratoga Springs, NY ; and Cascades Boxboard, Hebron, KY.

Visitors to drupa can see MetalFX in Dusseldorf next month: Hall 15, Stand D17.

ONLINE: www.metal-fx.com and www.sappi.com