Agfa has developed a new screening technology, which it says saves ink by replacing traditional print dots with spirals.
SPIR@L offers a number of benefits, according to Agfa, including vibrant colours and sharp images; print artefacts becoming “invisible”; avoidance of colour contamination in the blue colour range; and a reduced ink layer.
Mark Brindley, managing director of Agfa Graphics Oceania, told Print21 that the product will be on sale in Australia this year.
“It is just being rolled out now. In the main it’s designed to go into the coldset and heatset sectors, not commercial sheet-fed,” he said. “Our application specialists will be trained in the product, and then we will be able to talk to the general market about it. It should be available here within the second half of 2019.”
The SPIR@L technology is billed as the latest addition to Agfa’s ECO³ program, which aims to provide printers with “economy, ecology and extra convenience”.
According to Erik Peeters, market manager commercial print at Agfa, the process is “simple but brilliant”.
“We replaced the traditional dot used in printing with a more efficient spiral shape. That way, print jobs require less ink to fill in the exact same space, resulting in a crystal-clear image and a higher press efficiency every time,” he said.
Agfa says the process does not require any additional hardware in existing press and workflow setups.