Atlantic Zeiser has developed Digiline Vario, a printing system for full-colour in-line printing of flexible narrow web materials allows much greater ‘flexibility and agility’.

Using ProFlo inkjet technology, Digiline Vario is claimed to print vivid colours and high print quality, even for extremely small details in the form of graphics, fonts, coding and serialisation. OptiMate HMI provides, ‘clearly structured, intuitive user guidance, ensuring very easy Digiline Vario operation, reducing the orientation period and making it easier to train operators,’ the company noted.

The system also features a pre-validated package comprising printing and inspection units sharing the same end-to-end PDF workflow. This way, according to Atlantic Zeiser, it is much easier to technically integrate a camera into the workflow and set-up and validation take much less time. No reference image need be generated with inspection based on the original PDF and encompassing the entire print image, printed data and codes, grading and colours.

‘This,’ said James Freer, head of product management at Atlantic Zeiser, ‘greatly reduces effort for creating artworks, adapting formats, and qualifying on the lines. Overall, this means lower costs, risk, project complexity and validation effort.’

To allow integration of Digiline Vario into existing systems and processes, it is available as both in-line and a near-line systems. An off-line version, roll to roll, is also available.

Based on the company’s decades of experience in digital inline printing, Atlantic Zeiser identified Digiline Vario as permitting ‘much greater flexibility and agility’ for packaging processes, such as tubes and pouches, with full-colour inline printing of flexible narrow web materials such as foils for lidding applications or flexible laminates for pouching or tube converting. This in turn opens up users to the advantages on-demand printing and late-stage customisation for web materials. For widely used packaging processes such as pouches, stand-up pouches, flow wraps, and stick packs, this greatly reduces or eliminates the expensive storage of pre-printed material variants, noted Atlantic Zeiser.

Digiline Vario can also handle small batches economically with a claimed ‘consistent brand appearance’.