THE DATA FRONT

50 | l&l
Cees Schouten, production director at Geostick,
stands next to the company’s HP Indigo WS6000
digital press. A second machine is now on order
Flying colors
Digital press users have long called for higher speeds and greater productivity, and the WS6000 is HP
Indigo’s answer. Andy Thomas reports from one of the first beta users, Dutch converter Geostick
Located in a traditional Dutch landscape of dykes, rivers and
low lying villages, 85-year old label converter Geostick has
made a name for itself as a showcase for the HP Indigo’s
ws4000-series digital press technology.
Today, as a beta site for HP Indigo’s new WS6000, Geostick
is at the center of what may prove the next step in the digital
revolution – an offset quality digital machine that can match the
speed of a conventional press.
Geostick has been printing pressure-sensitive labels since
the 1950s. Peter Berveling has been running the company
for twenty years, following the retirement of his father. He has
three sons, 14, 17 and 19, who all take a lively interest in the
business.
Berveling has become a strong advocate of digital printing,
building a dedicated press hall designed to house up to
eight digital presses. Three ws4000/4050/4500 machines
have already been installed, along with an AB Graphic digital
converting line.
‘The digital hall was finished in January, which this was a
bad time in the industry,’ says Peter Berveling. ‘But it puts our
business in the right direction.’
The beta WS6000 was installed in December 2008. A measure
of its success is that the beta machine has been purchased and
a second WS6000 ordered.
Geostick production director Cees Schouten, like the rest of
the staff and operators interviewed by L&L, is a huge admirer of
the new machine, which is far more than an upgraded ws4500.
‘It is not simply that the WS6000 is faster. It is easier for the
operator, for instance to change reels and change the blanket.’
Geostick believes the WS6000 press changes the whole
relationship between conventional and digital. ‘The WS6000 will
definitely take jobs from our conventional presses,’ confirms
Labels&Labeling
Schouten. ‘We still do not know where is the cut-off point after
two months with the press. We ran a 6,000 linear meter job
recently where there were multiple designs. It depends on
factors like how many colors and how difficult is the print job.’
The WS6000 runs at speeds up to 60 meters/minute in the
new two color mode and 30 meters/minute 4-colors. The
speed increase is related directly to the 980mm circumference
imaging cylinder.
As Schouten points out, there are significant ‘under the hood’
changes which help make the press more operator friendly
compared to the ws4000/4050/4500-series machines.
First, digital file preparation has been moved away from the
press, so the operator is not spending press time adjusting
color. ‘If the color is not correct, the operator is encouraged
to adjust in the file and not to play with the machine,’ says
HP Indigo’s Christian Menegon. The Digital file Preparation
station (DFP) comes fitted with the HP Indigo Color Kit,
which includes EskoArtwork’s comprehensive Kaleidoscope
color management system and Pantone reference tables.
Mouse-driven operator input on the press is replaced by a
touch screen.
The WS6000 has a smaller overall footprint than the ws4500,
since the electronics cabinets are now fully integrated into the
press.
While the core 7-color imaging system remains the same, a
new writing head has been designed to handle the increased
volume of data written to the imaging cylinder, and the ink
canisters are larger to handle larger volumes of consumables,
with a new quick changeover system for the 5th, 6th and 7th
colors.
Reel changeover times have been significantly reduced by a
redesign of the web handling system. In particular the removal