Pragati implements seven-colour fixed ink set printing

“We have found that about 80% of Pantone colours can be matched within a delta-E of four,” said Paruchuri.

The Equinox technology converts packaging graphics from CMYK and spot colour to a seven-colour process. It is applied in the pre-press department when preparing jobs for press.

Paruchuri saw this solution in a beta stage at the EskoWorld Conference in Tampa, Florida about four years ago. It was then that he found the idea of taking a larger gamut of seven colours and having the software convert an artwork with any number of Pantones or RGB images to those seven colours, interesting.

During implementation, the set-up and maintenance of the profiles and strategies is crucial. “It took us a reasonable amount of effort - also because choosing the right set of seven colours is also important and determines which areas of the gamut you can cover,” added Paruchuri.

Since the CMYK colour space lacks in the green, orange and blue-violet areas, adding these three inks to expand the colour space makes sense.

Speaking to PrintWeek India about the benefits, Paruchuri said, “Especially on short-run jobs with multiple spot colours, there is considerable time saving on press, and press time is money.”
 

Elaborating the claim, Paruchuri explained with an example. He said, “For instance, if there are 10 jobs with two or three spot colours, all with a run length of around 1000 sheets then it would almost take an entire day to match the spot colours, wash-up, etc. The printing time would be only around 10 minutes per job, while set up would be 30-40 minutes. With this solution, we can complete the set-up in 10-15 minutes. So we can potentially complete the jobs in half the time.”

Paruchuri highlights a recent wedding card job, which included a reproduction of an MF Husain painting with rich oranges and blues, was produced flawlessly using Equinox.

This is one of the reasons why Pragati went into installing two new seven-colour plus coater Komori presses recently. An additional unit provides flexibility as the company already prints six-colour jobs and an additional colour would improve the quality and consistency, said Paruchuri.

Paruchuri feels that anyone doing lot of spot colour jobs, especially shorter runs, will find that fixed ink set printing will significantly improve their production efficiency. It is suitable for packaging printers who usually have lot of cartons/labels with spot colours.