Ondultecnica Lombarda, based in Pessano con Bornago (MI), is a contractor that offers a complete printing finishing service which, in addition to the traditional pure paper converting activities, includes lamination, screen printing, hot stamping, embossed printing and glossy varnishing: in the spring of 2023 the company installed an MGI JETvarnish 3DS by Konica Minolta, with which it will be able to guarantee the finishing of printed matter with embossed varnish and foil at lower costs, in quicker times, with special effects even for short runs.
Ondultecnica Lombarda was founded in 1969 as an artisan company and began to deal with publishing, lamination, die-cutting, and also produced lined boxes and promotional products. Everything proceeded in this way until 2012, the turning point when one of the current owners, Luca Galleri, took over the reins of the company and begins to expand thanks to new production and service ideas with a single objective: to give its customers a complete service.
At the end of 2015 Ondultecnica Lombarda changed headquarters and moved to its current site in Pessano con Bornago (MI), expanding the production space and adding three screen printing machines, one laminator and a Heidelberg cylindrical platen for hot stamping and dry embossing. It was in 2015 that Luca Galleri proposed to Damiano Viscardi, who was then working in another company and specialized in screen printing, “to join our forces and our skills, so I made an important choice, I acquired half of the company shares, and today Luca and I are managing directors with equal responsibilities, I have learned many things regarding paper converting and Luca about screen printing, in short, a perfect integration. Today there are 12 people in the company and the services we offer to our customers, who are printers who pass on their production to us for finishing, are very differentiated: screen printing, hot stamping, finishing, envelopes, lined rigid boxes, luxury boxes for fashion, cosmetics and watchmaking sectors; since 2018 we have specialized in high-end lined boxes, to satisfy the market so we have equipment to apply hot glue, to laminate and line the boxes. Over the years we have added other processes such as laser cutting, folding-gluing machines for cases and then we decided to install the MGI JETvarnish 3DS by Konica Minolta, which arrived in the company at the end of April 2023”, Damiano tells us, who already knew the machine and had been impressed with its performance. Now it was exactly the right time to install it because there is more demand for this type of finishing on the market, especially for short runs, so Ondultecnica Lombarda wanted to add glossy varnishing and digital foil transfer to everything it was already doing. “The strength of our small-large company is precisely the ability to offer a finished product, box or case, therefore ready to be filled”, adds Damiano.
The pandemic is now just a bad memory but Damiano proudly underlines that after an initial period of suffering due to the closures, since August 2020, having focused with foresight on boxes and cases, they have recorded a boom in orders and have managed to recover what they had lost, considering that e-commerce exploded right then. “In that period we did our utmost to avoid having to make dismissals or reduce working hours, because for us our collaborators are a precious resource to be respected and rewarded, their satisfaction is an added value of the company”, states with conviction Damiano.
More value and creativity with personalized multisensory applications
MGI JETvarnish 3DS is a digital UV spot varnish system with hot foil on various paper sizes up to 36.4 x 102 cm and variable data printing with foil: a complete solution for tactile and embossed varnishing with various finishing options for different types of products, to give flat surfaces captivating sensorial textures. The machine produces with single pass printing, that is why the MGI JETvarnish 3DS is a UV lamination varnishing device that offers high speed and high productivity. The varnishing thickness can be adapted to customer needs very flexibly and on demand, furthermore the intelligent combination of MGI’s unique inkjet technology with Konica Minolta’s on-demand piezoelectric drop-in print heads ensures incredible quality.
From September 2023 the machine went into production, finishing small runs and Ondultecnica Lombarda created a calendar with a very special cover to let customers see and touch the finishing possibilities of the new machine: and the wow effect was achieved, “also because some jobs cannot be done with hot stamping, furthermore it is not possible to give depth to the print, but with the MGI JETvarnish 3DS it is possible, with the right ideas and developing the work with a certain grace the only limit is creativity”, explains Damiano.
Ondultecnica Lombarda is already present in the cosmetics and perfume sector, but above all in this sector the requests for customization are increasingly increasing, and since it is possible to perform a numerical control there are no problems to print one sheet different from the other.
Giving shape and depth to ideas
Since Ondultecnica Lombarda is a subcontractor it does not directly contact the end user of the finished printed products, “so for us it is very important that creatives and marketing agencies are aware of how many finishing possibilities there are with our new machine, for the moment the printers are our ambassadors, but we never stop and we are doing our best to promote the opportunities that the MGI JETvarnish 3DS offers”, explains Damiano.
The JETVARNISH 3DS HubManager software suite, supplied with the machine, allows you to track jobs, manage the job queue, create job tickets, recall reprints and adjust the AIS scanner in one simple, self-explanatory tool. A powerful function allows you to easily export all detailed production data for internal cost analysis and reporting. Spot Varnish Editor is designed for immediate editing of working files. This gives the user the flexibility to adjust and edit their print jobs instantly, saving time and money. Product Cost Analyzer can anticipate production costs in detail and provide precise information on consumable costs for each print job even before the job has been printed. And it was precisely this software equipment that favorably impressed Ondultecnica Lombarda: “once the PDF has been inserted into the system, even a screen mask, by scanning the sheet directly in the machine I have the possibility of overlapping what I need to varnish without having the constraints of printing register marks, so everything is easier for my client too, and above all there is no need for pre-printing because I make all the changes to the file directly using the program resident in the machine, so I can enlarge, reduce, put a texture, stretch and shorten a text, all autonomously and in real time, and obviously thanks to the possibility of working on the file in this way, startu-ps are quick and also format change is quick”, says Damiano.
The thickness of the varnish applied is variable and can be adapted to individual needs: for a maximum 3D effect it can reach up to 232 µm, whereas the minimum thickness (on laminate surfaces) is 21 µ.
Compared to screen printing, the finishing process is very simple, for example “for a run of 100 sheets, while in screen printing I have to print the film, prepare the frame and start up a 70×100 machine, with the MGI JETvarnish 3DS I get to the first sheet production very quickly and easily: with this machine we will also be able to offer a valid alternative for finishing compared to the traditional ones (screen printing and hot stamping) which until now we have used on all productions”, explains Damiano.
Productivity and versatility
For traditional printers, foil was out of reach, requiring years of experience, high costs and complexity in set-up. The iFOIL S online module for the JETvarnish 3DS can overcome these limitations, allowing the addition of foil to packaging, a book cover, or any promotional material.
For the first time in the history of finishing it is possible to integrate foil and variable data: it is easy to imagine the power of attraction of any printed communication personalized in this way. In addition to making it economical to use foil, the JETvarnish 3DS with the iFOIL S option also allows it to be applied for short runs with variable data, creating effects that attract attention. No previous manufacturing process has combined the rich appearance of foil with variable data printing for the creation of promotional products.
With speeds of up to 2,298 A3 sheets per hour, embossing foil won’t slow down your productivity. Up to two colors of foil can be applied simultaneously: the machine uses supports from 135 to 450 g/m², in most cases laminated matt or glossy, including multi-layer paper, plastic, PVC and other painted materials.
“We are extremely satisfied with the choice we made, furthermore we were supported by Konica Minolta with an impeccable training and assistance service, I can’t wait to be able to use the new equipment better and better, because we are convinced that this type of finishing will be requested more and more often and we are ready to satisfy these needs”, concludes Damiano.
