Industrial + Specialty Printing

(April 2012) posted on Fri May 04, 2012

Leonhard Kurz presents its enhanced cold foils for sheet-fed UV offset printing

Leonhard Kurz has a new cold foil for sheet-fed UV offset printing that the company believes will set a new standard in quality. The cold foil is called Luxor/Alufin KPS-OP and, according to Kurz, provides consistently good results under a wide variety of application conditions. When it is necessary to apply foil to large areas, the cold foil will achieve uniform coverage. When filigree details are required, on the other hand, KPS-OP will produce a high edge definition transfer. Even fine rasters are easy to implement. While it is possible in principle to transfer glossy metallic layers as a raster using the cold-foil technique, adequate results have only been obtainable in the past for coarser rasters. KPS-OP allows the attractive design option of rasterized gloss effects to be utilized far more widely.

The cold foil KPS-OP was developed for UV offset printing but is equally suitable for conventional offset printing. It generally adheres equally well to conventional and UV-cured adhesives, and can be overprinted with conventionally drying as well as UV curing inks and lacquers.

“KPS-OP embodies a great deal of development work and accumulated know-how”, explains Dr. Ulrike Plaia, a product manager at Kurz. “We have put many years of intensive research into cold foil technology, and in doing so have worked closely with machine, adhesive, ink and rubber blanket manufacturers. This new cold foil grade is the result of the cumulative experience we have gained. The users of this product have confirmed that it delivers an excellent print result and a very high gloss level, in particular on flat surfaces, and is uncomplicated to process.”

Luxor/Alufin KPS-OP is a silver-colored cold foil that can be used to produce a wide variety of metallic colors when overprinted. The foil can however, on request, be produced in other colors. There is also an identical cold foil grade with a selection of holographic designs that is called Light Line KSO.