I believe, all printers need to keep investing in value addition and new capabilities. And we too have to constantly offer our customers new ways to stand out among their competitors. This results in constant investments in new equipment, material and processes.

 

For one such initiative, we bought a doming machine to offer print embellishments. Doming is typically done on stickers and is made by applying a non-yellowing, scratch-resistant polyurethane dome over a printed and die-cut surface. This creates a “3D” domed effect. 

 

We thought to use it for spot effects on printed sheets for catalogues, book covers and other marketing collateral. However, we weren’t able to get it right for several reasons. 

 

Firstly while there is a solution to do spot effects, it didn’t work very well. Since we had an entry-level machine, a large part of the operation required a lot of operator skill and the designs that we could produce were limited. Also, the process used a substance that hardened very quickly, and since we tended to use the machine occasionally, the machine would keep getting choked.

 

As a result, we were never confident of offering the effect to our customers and didn’t end up marketing the capability. Eventually, when the machine manufacturer offered possible solutions to overcome the hurdles, it didn’t seem to justify further investments. Over time, our staff and operators had lost confidence, and the equipment remains unutilised.

 

It’s quite unusual to use doming in this manner, and so we were in relatively unfamiliar territory.