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Article
In the Fold
August 1, 2008 By: Chris Raney Paperboard PackagingRunning Hot and Cold with Foiling?
If you are considering adding foiling to your operation, it pays to weigh the advantages of hot vs. cold. Whether we're trying to sell ourselves, our products or our services, if it's in style it's what we want, or what the market demands and yes... less can be more.
Foil stamping has been around for a long time, but with changes in technology and consumer trends the fashion of foil is growing at a dramatic rate. Consumers like the way it looks, brand owners like the way it sells and converters like the opportunity for new business.
 Chris Raney |
This has brought about an onslaught of printing press and third party inline cold foiling units that promise a cost effective means to add foiling capabilities. There are some key reasons why cold foiling should be seen as a complement to hot foil stamping, rather than as a replacement. The most important is the quality of output. The heat and pressure of hot foil stamping produces strong adhesion and a beautiful gloss finish that cold foil cannot replicate.
Of course, after cold foiling there's the option to jazz it up with overprinting which is great for some applications. However, for packaging, particularly in high quality products such as cigarettes, liquor, and perfumes, the aesthetic quality of hot foiling is unbeatable.
Another vital differentiation of hot foil stamping is the ability to emboss the foil as it's applied. Products from TV dinners to malt whisky use embossed foil to enhance visual impact and produce a graphic that can be felt as well as seen — an attribute cold foiling lacks.
Holograms are perhaps the fastest growing segment of the foiling market and a segment where cold foil is not an option since none of the cold systems on the market currently offer hologram registration.
Hot foilers often have the ability to optimize the indexing of the foil as well — a capability that inline systems lack. This means that foil waste is dramatically less on hot than on cold equipment. Yes, foot for foot, cold foil is generally less expensive than hot, but on long runs the cost of wasted foil soon mounts up, and waste is waste.
Speed and makeready between the two processes should be carefully compared. While cold foiling presses can be 30 to 40 percent faster than the fastest flatbed hot foil stampers, the difference between cold and rotary hot foiling presses is negligible.
It's true, there's a built-in time advantage by printing and foiling in one process; however, cold inline foil systems lengthen the makeready time of the printing press. On the other hand, if your plant has good systems, quality tooling, and well-trained operators, the time taken to setup an offline hot foil stamping press should not be prohibitive.
Process versatility is another advantage that hot-foil stamping has over cold. With inline cold foil, the placement of the units determines what effects can be delivered. With an offline, hot foil setup, the user has the choice of foiling before or after printing, and can change this for every job if necessary.
The most sophisticated cold foil units typically offer only six foil lines per job, while the market leading hot foil systems can offer up to twelve foil lines, again, increasing versatility. Cold foil can only be applied to coated papers and board; otherwise the substrate will absorb a critical amount of adhesive, which can result in poor bonding. So, semi-coated and uncoated materials, and miniflute corrugated will still require the hot foil process.
There is no doubt that the cold foil system is ideal for certain applications and appears ready to offer an alternative to metallized board and metallic inks. However many who were early to adopt the cold process admit that they view the technology as a complement to their hot-foil stamping capabilities, allowing them to run certain jobs in a single pass.
Cold foiling has opened new design possibilities to users. However, we can't think of writing off hot foil. It's still very much king when it comes to quality and versatility.
Chris Raney is vice president, Folding Carton products for Bobst Group USA, Roseland, N.J. He is responsible for the Folding Carton Business Area for the North American market. He can be reached at christopher.raney@bobstgroup.com.
