Sanjay Jain, senior general manager for sales in the commercial print segment at TechNova, who oversees the North and Eastern region, is glad about the T9’s performance. “The printing companies, who relied on service bureaus, are now bringing platemaking capabilities in-house,” he said.

Shreerang Joshi, deputy chief operating officer for sales in the commercial print segment at TechNova, explained the reason for the trend of print companies gravitating toward the ThermoStar T9. “Service bureaus are a very big segment in the commercial segment, with about 50% of the plate business coming from it. If you see, for printers, plate cost is just around 3-4% of the total input cost if you consider paper, ink etc, unlike service bureau where it’s the primary cost. The tendency to reduce the cost traditionally has been plate-centric and hence we have seen a phase with UV in a service bureau. However, there is a significant shift in thermal as TechNova’s thermal offering changes the traditional ROI of UV with a proven lowest cost in use.”

Joshi added, the catch is here. “Lowest cost in use, unbeatable thermal quality, and the entire support mechanism make it the robust choice for both, the most demanding service bureau and quality conscious in-house printers.”

According to Jain, there are other options available in the market, but what TechNova offers in the form of ThermoStar T9 is the reliability of the brand TechNova. “Packaging customers are also inclining towards T9 due to our ecosystem approach wherein we have been able to bring in offers around the ThermoStar T9, cloud-based Apogee workflow, automation software from Enfocus, packaging design software from Engview and Phoenix, and cutting tables from Jwei.”

S Swarnangka, chief marketing officer at TechNova, added another dimension to the popularity of the ThermoStar T9 – giving the customer the power of choice, and the reason print companies are opting for ThermoStar T9 is that it is an open, scalable, modular platform. “Once you buy a T9, there is no restriction on using plates of any make, and above all, the customer can get it serviced from any qualified engineers. The warranty is not linked to usage of a certain plate.”

TechNova also offers its customers, what Swarnangka said, complimentary access to TechNova Equipment Dashboard (TED). “Every part of the services experience is managed by this smart dashboard that offers anticipatory services. Since we are serving the hyper-demanding digital customers through this solution, we are able to offer same agile, on time, joyous service experiences to CTP customers as well.”

The new model of ThermoStar T9 HS on the stand is modular, which can be upgraded to 10,000-dpi (up from 2,400-dpi), making it capable of lenticular printing.

The ThermoStar T9 uses a single beam laser along with spatial lighting device technology and is an efficient energy-saver. ThermoStar T9 HS uses unique laser dot technology to produce accurate FM screening, essential for high-quality colour printing and guarantees 20-micron FM screening production on the press.

The ThermoStar T9 can image up to 40 plates eight-up per hour and can go up to 45 plates of smaller sizes. The platesetter can accept maximum plate size of 1163x940-mm and has an exposing size of 1163x920-mm.