On my second leg of the event I wanted find out more about Aqueous/UV coatings, how its done, the speed, the cost of the machines and the cost of the consumables. I stoped at KOMPAC, didn't even know they were located around the corner from me. On the low end they had a device where you could hand feed sheets for a UV coating, they use a liquid that comes in one gallon containers, you hand feed the documents in the liquid is dispered onto the paper and then the document/printer piece is subjet to a UV light thus turning the liquid into a solid. Producing a varnished/high gloss document. Cost is estimated at .01 to .02 cents per square foot.
I looked at this technology because of the ComColors, since they can't print on gloss and the print is a dull/matt finish. Lowend price for the one system was 18K and then you could add a sheet feeder to it, didn't bother to price out the sheet feeder. I've heard there are less expensive systems however I did not have the time to vist all of the manufacturers that were there, seems like there are many players in this market from the low end to the high end.
From there I went to look at envelope presses, what's and envelope press you might ask. Well it's nothing more than a glorified laser printer with some enhancements. The boot I visited was from Xante, there they had two oki 9850's. Cost per image per envelope is estimated at .02, I;m thing more like .025-.030
The first was outfitted with a top down envelope feeder and exit conveyor feeder, this system was had a variable resistor to control heat and another for ..............uh, I don't remember,,,I'll get to my notes in a moment. The first Illumia as Xante calls $15,995 and had a speed of 60 envelopes per minute. The other was another 9850 however this was equipment with a fieryor some color matching software and that device was around $20k. How many envelopes do you have to print to get back your investment?? One printer I spoke to the other day told me that he would resell the envelopes for .15 cents each!!! That's alot of money for branding huh!! So, basically you'd have to sell 133,000 envelopes and or have a minimum volume of 2,700 envelopes a month just to turn a small profit! Alas, this product is HOT! Mark my words, every print will have one of these in the next 5 years, whether it's laser or inkjet, this is the last part of a shop going digital!! Oki, took my advise and finally came out with thier own envelope printer a few months ago, Ricoh did not take my advise and it seems to me that right now, Oki is capturing ALL of the consumables in this lucrative market.
Bad things I've heard about these presses, light creasing with corners, really not a big deal, some printers have gone to side flaps. Other is the cost of consumables, especially if you buy from Xante! Again, I mentioned to RISO that they need to take thier technology a step further and develop and inexpensive inkjet envelope press, Riso could do this for a penny and produce evenlopes at a speed of 180-300 per minute!!!
Thats's it for now, more to come when I have the time, end of the month for me!
-=Good Selling=-
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