Highcon to Showcase Solutions for High-End Finishing at PRINTING United
Many printing businesses that have mastered short-run production with digital presses still struggle with short-run finishing, which conventional postpress equipment isn’t well suited to handling. With the solutions it will promote at PRINTING United (Dallas, Tex., October 23-25, 2019), Highcon offers printers a better way.
For the past 10 years, Highcon technology has been bringing the efficiency and economy of digital prepress and printing workflows to the final step of the print manufacturing sequence. Matt Bennett, Highcon’s Vice President Sales and General Manager Americas, says that the Highcon Beam and Euclid III series digital cutting and creasing systems are a perfect fit for print service providers that want to offer their customers differentiation and rapid time-to-market in cost-efficient short runs.
Highcon digital finishing machines handle folding carton and corrugated stocks for a wide variety of commercial print applications, including packaging (both folding carton and corrugated), display and POS. With these systems, digital print can have precision cutting and intricate special effects without the need for conventional creasing and die cutting processes. Bennett says that Highcon’s patented DART technology for creasing and its laser cutting arrays redefine what is possible in the finishing of digitally printed pieces.
As an example, in the city of Grapevine, Tex., not far from PRINTING United’s venue at the Kay Bailey Hutchison Convention Center in Dallas, Virtual Packaging is using Highcon technology to expand its business from design and prototyping into short-run carton production. By pairing a Highcon Beam system with a 40” digital press, the company will create distinctive packaging for its customers that it would not have been able to produce with conventional equipment.
The Highcon Beam installation at Virtual Packaging is one of many customer success stories that Highcon will share in booth 11632 at PRINTING United, where an application showcase will introduce attendees to the full range of value-adding special effects that digital cutting and creasing are capable of. Bennett says Highcon chose PRINTING United as its principal expo event in 2019 “because we wanted to be part of the largest show of the year.”
With 90% of its exhibit space already reserved, PRINTING United will host more than 500 exhibitors across all categories of graphic reproduction. A joint venture of the Specialty Graphic Imaging Association (SGIA) and NAPCO Media, PRINTING United offers a new perspective on profiting in segments from garment to graphic, packaging to commercial, and industrial to in-plant.
Its theme is convergence: the ability that technology from providers like Highcon gives print service providers to branch beyond their core businesses into new and profitable graphic markets. Co-located with PRINTING United is BRAND United, an educational program aimed at brand owners and other customer audiences.
“Many print service providers face bottlenecks in finishing after printing digitally in short runs,” Bennett says. “At PRINTING United, our goal will be to show how Highcon solutions not only break the bottlenecks, but help to turn finishing into a profit center as well.”
About Highcon
Highcon has developed a truly innovative digital cutting and creasing solution that is transforming the post-print market. Highcon now offers folding carton and corrugated converters, printers and trade finishers a product portfolio that covers a wide range of formats, substrates and applications: from general commercial, folding carton and corrugated packaging, display products and variable data cutting. The Highcon solutions replace the expensive and slow conventional die-making and setup process with a digital technology that bridges the gap between design creativity and production capability, delivering improved responsiveness, design flexibility and the ability to perform a wide range of applications in-house. Highcon products are installed at customer sites all over the world.
About PRINTING United
PRINTING United, a new event owned and operated by SGIA in partnership with NAPCO Media, will launch in Dallas, Texas, October 23-25, 2019. Focusing on the opportunities presented by the convergence of printing technologies and markets, PRINTING United will cover print and finishing technologies in industry segments from garment to graphic, packaging to commercial, and industrial. Its objective is to convey all components of integrated solutions to satisfy virtually any client need.
