HP carton sample printed on black board using white and flourescent pink
Fluorescent coloured toner is the latest special effect to come to market and there is now a wide range of methods to make your print shine, says Barney Cox.
It has never looked so bright for digital print, quite literally, with the recent advent of fluorescent toner, the latest of a growing (and in this particular case glowing) range of special effects. Until a couple of years ago it was, with the notable exceptions such as HP Indigo and Kodak Nexpress, rare for a digital colour device to offer anything beyond straight CMYK. Latterly, that has changed with machines at all levels of price and productivity gaining additional units capable of printing clear, white or metallic and now, in some cases, neon images.
Flourescent yellow samples produced by Ricoh at drupa
HP Indigo was the first digital press supplier to introduce a true fluorescent colour with its hot pink. It has been followed by Oki with the 6410 NeonColor, and soon to ship are neon yellow toners for Ricoh and Heidelberg machines, which were demonstrated at drupa. While the Indigo, Ricoh and Heidelberg machines are all SRA3 production machines costing hundreds of thousands, the A4 Oki is a very different machine suited to low volumes, and with a price tag of a couple of thousand. Its target market is not primarily graphics though, originally being developed for T-shirt transfers, with secondary applications for point of sale such as barkers, shelf edge strips and banners. In addition to A4 it can also handle banners up to 216 mm x 1,322 mm. It uses three fluorescent toners, pink, blue and yellow, which replace standard cyan, magenta and yellow. The other machines use an additional channel, and currently only offer one fluorescent colour …
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