Features Digital Printing Printing
Xerox to Launch White Dry Ink

Xerox plans to commercially release a White Dry Ink on October 2, 2017, for the fifth print station of its iGen 5 digital press. The technology, which has been undergoing tests at Brampton’s Data Communications Management, will be on display from September 10 to 14 at PRINT 17 in Chicago.

“This is exciting news for iGen 5 customers,” said Jim Hamilton, group director, Keypoint Intelligence InfoTrends. “This announcement opens up a whole new range of applications. Designers will love the ability to use white on coloured and transparent substrates to create promotional items like brochures, business cards, greeting cards and invitations, point-of-purchase signage, direct mail postcards and letters, and book covers. The opportunities also extend to packaging applications like folding cartons.”

According to InfoTrends, digital print enhancement volume is predicted to grow at a 27 percent CAGR from 2015 to 2020, reaching 25 billion pages by 2020 in the U.S. and Western Europe. With the addition of White Dry Ink to the iGen 5 platform, print providers can apply spot effects to produce printed pieces with a physical look and feel.

Xerox’s White Dry Ink features the ability to print White Dry Ink only as well as white layers under or over CMYK. The company claims it provides strong brightness and opacity that’s achievable in a single pass of white. The iGen 5’s automated multi-pass mode can also be leveraged to produce up to two layers of white. Additional layers of white can be manually printed for custom applications.

“We have been testing White Dry Ink with our iGen 5 and we see great promise for expanding our offerings to our customers,” said Alan Roberts, Senior VP, Data Communications Management Corp. “White Dry Ink has great applications for printing on black and other stocks and as an underlay to create memorable cards, posters, signage and other marketing collateral.”