Colour card revolution driven by Springfield
Colour card production is undergoing a revolution, and one that will bring huge benefits to the paints and coatings industry.
Unsurprisingly, Springfield Solutions is leading that revolution with our dedication to innovation and long standing knowledge of, and expertise in, digital printing.
Traditionally, colour cards were printed using ink deposition, an onerous process which requires individual inks matching to every colour to be printed on the card – a time consuming and expensive process. Ink deposition printers are also limited by the number of heads or ‘deposits’ they have, meaning the process of creating a new colour card has to be broken down into stages. And between each stage there are multiple ink clean downs to avoid contamination, adding more time and cost to the process.
So the industry moved on to using litho and flexo printing for colour cards, which was a step in the right direction. But these processes are not without their problems. Plate making creates long set up times which add to the length and cost of a job, and large minimum order quantities mean companies often have to buy more cards than they need and pay for that wastage.
As trends move on, litho and flexo technologies are not keeping pace. Across the board, the trend has shifted away from long runs of identical units to shorter, bespoke runs, and colour cards are no different. Plate making and minimum order quantities make traditional forms of printing inefficient in fulfilling this need.
But thanks to our research and experimentation, there is now a better way. Our colour matching experts can accurately reproduce paint colours via our colour management model, which are then stored as digital files. This means individual inks no longer need to be created for each colour on a card, but can be synthesised to match any shade. The process is significantly more efficient than ink deposition and litho and flexo, but critically, involves no loss in quality.
Once the paint colours are matched and stored, we can print colour cards off on a digital printer, a far more efficient process. And like all other forms of digital printing, we can create very short print runs, meaning minimum order quantities are now a thing of the past. With digital, you tell us the precise number you need and that is what you get. Crucially, that is what you pay for.
But don’t just take our word for it. If you want to check out the quality of digitally printed colour cards then click here to claim your free sample. Colour cards are the latest in a long line of digital solutions Springfield has pioneered in the printing industry. If you like what you see, get in touch and join us in the revolution.