Ronald van Westerop is team leader printing at Joh. Enschedé Stamps in Haarlem (NL). After three quarters of a year of testing, with Tower Millennium HSW-200EU fountain solution he significantly reduced the alcohol percentage on two presses. Moreover, the printing process is now stable.
Joh. Enschedé Stamps employs about sixty people. Seven printers operate the presses: a Heidelberg Speedmaster 105XL with six-colour plus paint and a ten-colour Müller Martini rotary press with UV inks. For over a century and a half, the company has been producing stamps for customers all over the world and other valuable printed matter such as diplomas. Joh. Enschedé Stamps is one of the oldest companies in the Netherlands, established in 1703.
Special inks
Van Westerop and his team have been experimenting for a long time to equalize the composition of the fount on the Heidelberg Speedmaster 105XL press and the rotary press. They succeeded well after using the Tower Millennium HSW-200EU fountain solution.
"We now work with about 3.5 percent Tower Millennium HSW-200EU and have managed to get the alcohol percentage down to about 4.5 percent.
An even lower percentage would be nice, but that’s not going to work with the special inks we use. A lot of printed matter, such as stamps, is printed in halftone screen 120 with very fine images or texts."
One of the first
"For us, stability of the printing process is absolutely essential. We have been working with Tower for a number of years now. I wouldn't be surprised if we were one of the first in the Netherlands. Now that we have a stable printing process, I'm not going to experiment any further for the time being. With the current percentages, we meet the standards and we achieve the high printing quality that our customers demand".
