Betting on Digital…and Winning

ILS is something of laboratory for color digital printing, and almost literally so. Its digital presses and finishing are all in a dedicated, 10,000-square-foot "digital room," a gleaming space that's busy for three shifts, five days a week. An HP Indigo WS6000 (13˝ webs, 98 feet per minute), which was first commercially available in 2009, was operating as a beta unit in this room two years earlier, one of the first HP Indigo WS6000 installations worldwide. This year's addition of the Delta Industrial finishing line was a first, because it is a unique hybrid unit, one that can operate in-line with the HP Indigo or off-line, as needed. The ILS digital room also holds the only North American installation of an AB Graphic Digilam system for laminating narrow-web packaging materials for eventual conversion into bags, pouches, and sachets on site. Around these systems are still other technologies that ILS is putting to good use: a seaming machine and sheeting machine, both for shrink sleeves and both by Karlville; and design and workflow software by EskoArtwork and LabelTraxx.