TKS’s JetLeader digital press and its variable cutoff folder are a rare newspaper-oriented offering among the 2014 InterTech technology award winners.
The lucite stars made famous by Printing Industries of America’s predecessor GATF since 1978 are mostly handed out this year for packaging print innovations.
Among them is the V-Pak packaging press Goss International evolved from its heatset commercial technology.
Others include real-time 3D packaging software from Creative Edge, the ICE toner that enables Xeikon digital label presses, HP’s Indigo 20000 flexible packaging press, a Hinterkopf digital printer for shaped packaging and Esko’s flexo platemaking and extended gamut technology for packaging print.
Heidelberg’s Stahlfolder PFX feeder technology, Just Normlicht’s handy Sopectis 1.0 light meter – which tackles sources such as LED – and iQuote, developed developed by EFI after ten years of management information systems acquisitions are also honoured among the 11 winners.
The JetLeader 1500 inkjet web has been a star performer for pioneer NewsWeb in Chicago, which has two and recently changed its name to Topweb.
PIA technology and research vice president Mark Bohan says judges were impressed by several aspects of the TKS press including the company’s open source ink policy and new variable-cutoff folder. They also credited it for well thought out engineering, robust construction and product flexibility.
TKS president Ryutaro Shibasays receiving the recognition in the North American market is “very important because there are so many business opportunities to incorporate the press and its flexibility into a business model”.
Apart from the two presses at Topweb, TKS has a third at Hawaii Hochi in Honolulu.
Pictured: One of the two TKS inkjet webs at Topweb