Global creasing specialists Tech-ni-Fold Ltd displayed their latest creasing secret and launched a series of ground breaking products at this year’s Gulf Print & Pack show in Dubai.
Tech-ni-Fold have enjoyed 15 years of success in creating over 500 finishing solutions and in selling over 70,000 of their flagship products, the Tri-Creaser (a device that fits onto folding machines to significantly improve creasing so that folded items don’t crack.)
The managing director of Tech-ni-Fold, Graham Harris, said: “Fifteen years ago, nobody believed that a rotary device attached to a folding machine or any piece of finishing equipment could eliminate the problem of fibre cracking or match the results coming from flatbed letterpress systems. Keeping work on a folding machine keeps it away from expensive outsourcing or processing it as a separate operation – our technology has allowed us to save our customers substantial amounts of money and hours of precious time on a weekly basis.”
Digital print cracks really badly unless it is creased effectively, and for 15 years manufacturers have developed many versions of creasing solutions based on the flatbed matrix method to combat this issue. However, due to the integration of recycled paper with cheaper components, cracking on the inside of folded materials, rather than the spines of the fold is becoming more of an issue. The danger is that products such as brochures or leaflets that have been printed using dark inks on brittle recycled stock may open up to reveal two ugly white lines at the edges of the crease.
The company revealed to the printing world how it is possible to highly reduce or completely eliminate the two white lines using a newly developed multi-creasing mechanism. “Our proto-type creasing adaptation is presently going through the patent process,” Harris said. However, the company demonstrated its solution using a set of prototypes.
THE CREASESTREAM MINI SERIES
Born out of the success of Tech-ni-Fold, the company launched its CreaseStream mini machines. The CreaseStream Mini series of three machines were created as cost-effective entry level creasing and micro-perforating solutions for digital print companies.
“The patented rubber creasing technology we developed through Tech-ni-Fold is also harnessed in rotary format on each machine; this of course gives our customers a great advantage over traditional methods in the area of speed and versatility,” said Harris.
The following solutions won the international platinum award for design at the 2013 British inventions show.
• CreaseStream Mini Standard: The manual unit has a rotary handle attached to the creasing shafts so that the user can feed sheets through the paper guides with one hand whilst turning them through with the other.
• CreaseStream Mini Quick-feed: The Quick-feed version has exactly the same features as the standard version only the user doesn’t need to hand feed the sheets, instead a special feeding system has been integrated. The feeder works without a vacuum pump or electricity.
• CreaseStream Mini Auto-feed: With the Auto-feed version the handle has been replaced for a motor so that output will reach beyond 4,000 sheets per hour.
All three CreaseStream Mini machines benefit from the same tooling shaft.
