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National Ticket Moves To Jetrion 3025 UV Inkjet System For Variable Data

Press release from the issuing company

PAXINOS, PA - September 13, 2006 - National Ticket Company is a remarkable enterprise in American business. The company, a highly respected world leader in ticket printing, celebrates its centennial year in 2007, and remains owned and managed today by the same two families that originally founded the company. Through those years, National Ticket has maintained its steady course for growth by consistently providing a high level of quality and service. The company has also been an industry leader in introducing new technologies that enable the development of pace-setting innovations in consecutively numbered printed media products. The newest technology installed by National Ticket represents a major advance in the company's variable imaging capabilities. Since the company's ticket and visual identification products are produced on a wide range of substrates, both synthetic and traditional paper, National Ticket, which had been using toner-based printers, wanted greater flexibility and productivity in its variable imaging operations. "Digital UV inkjet technology was the solution we were looking for," says Ed Ludes Vice President of Production. "And we quickly became aware of the potential of the Jetrion 3025 UV inkjet printer to help us significantly increase our variable data imaging capabilities." Jetrion did an extensive pre-installation survey of the press equipment that the 3025 system printheads would be installed on, and designed a custom printhead mount for the press. Five printheads were installed on the press - Jetrion's first five-printhead installation. The multi-head configuration allows National Ticket to print variable images across an entire 12-inch area of the web. "The installation went as planned," observes Ludes. "Jetrion thought of everything up front and the installation went as smoothly as we could ever want, for a modification of an existing piece of equipment in our plant." Ludes points out that the results National Ticket is getting with the 3025 system are noticeably better than those delivered by toner-based systems. Early in the installation planning process, Jetrion worked with the company to determine which UV ink formulation would produce the best results on the various substrates that National Ticket would be using. Leveraging its core competence as an ink developer and manufacturer, Jetrion was able to optimize overall system performance to meet National Ticket's throughput, drop spread and adhesion requirements. "With Jetrion's UV ink, we're getting far better adhesion and durability across the board for our products," Ludes says. He explains that toner-based images have a tendency to flake off a printed product as it is being used. Image durability is an important issue for many types of products such as season tickets or other printed products with multiple uses that may be carried in a pocket or handled for several months. In addition to enhanced durability and print quality, National Ticket has also realized an important gain in uptime and productivity that the Jetrion 3025 UV system has delivered. "We're able to shut the system down over a weekend, come back on Monday morning, do a quick purge and be up and running in minutes," Ludes says. He contrasts that with non-UV systems, which have serious start-up issues when they have been sitting idle for just a few hours. The fluids in those systems dry in the nozzles and require lengthy maintenance procedures to clean before restarting. UV inks stay wet until they are cured and always flow smoothly through the nozzles. A sharp increase in printhead reliability has also been a major advantage of the new system. "We've been using the Jetrion system since the beginning of the year and we've had literally zero downtime associated with the printheads." "The 3025 has also allowed us to increase our press speed," he adds. "On some products we have seen running speed increases in the 10% to 15% range, and that's a significant productivity gain." Ludes cites the simplicity of operation with the 3025 system compared with other inkjet systems National Tickets has used. "The learning curve was easy to climb," he says. "Our operator was able to learn the software and use the system quickly just with Jetrion's basic instruction. In fact, he was able to understand the software and hardware so well, he started offering suggestions to increase production." "We're impressed with the ongoing support we're getting from Jetrion," Ludes says. "They have been very good in listening to our problems and suggestions, then offering software and ink upgrades to address those issues. No matter if it's a new development or a problem, Jetrion handles it quickly, professionally and hassle-free. They have a great product and are a good company to work with."

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