HEIDELBERG, Germany — Owners of NexPress 2100 systems can now offer their customers even more printing options, with the flexibility to produce jobs on a variety of self-adhesive labels and synthetic substrates, NexPress Solutions LLC announced today. The additional substrates create new application opportunities for print providers, and fit with NexPress Solutions' corporate theme "More than a press. Powering success." Through its Substrate Qualification Program, the company has fully qualified a range of additional substrates for use with its NexPress 2100 digital production color presses, including labels and the first series of synthetic-substrate brands. - Labels from such well-known suppliers as Avery Dennison, Raflatac and Cartiere Fedrigoni. The labels include un-coated, coated gloss, and coated-matte labels used for mailings, packaging, product identification, safety stickers and more. - Multiple Teslin digital sheets from PPG Industries, Inc., from thin SP800 to TS1000. Teslin sheets are PE-based substrates that are tear-resistant, waterproof and have high fold endurance. They are commonly used to produce maps, signs, identification cards, licenses, menus and posters. - Multiple Pretex sheets from FiberMark, from 100 grade to 250 — highly tear- and heat-resistant, latex-based substrates that are also biodegradable. This synthetic substrate is commonly used for instruction manuals, outdoor maps, book covers, brochures and charts. “With more than 400 qualified substrates, our NexPress 2100 systems already accept the highest number of substrates of any digital color printing device, said Chris Payne, CMO, NexPress Solutions LLC. “These additional qualifications provide NexPress 2100 system owners a number of ready-to-use labels and synthetics to choose from — greatly expanding the types of jobs they can produce for their customers.” Payne noted that the company’s hundreds of qualified offset, digital and specialty substrates, combined with the NexPress Substrate Assistant — which lets NexPress 2100 system users print on not-yet-qualified papers — make print providers’ opportunities virtually endless. Qualifying Digital Substrates NexPress Solutions’ Substrate Qualification Program enables paper manufacturers to submit any paper for testing by NexPress engineers. Once qualified, substrates are listed in the NexPress 2100 press’ Substrate Catalog, which graphic designers and press operators use to set up electronic job tickets on the press. Printers get high-quality printing and cost-saving results by using NexPress-qualified substrates. Each substrate script instructs the NexPress 2100 press on the ideal amount of NexPress DryInk TM for each impression, which reduces waste and ensures optimum print quality. In qualification trials, NexPress engineers subject thousands of pieces of each submitted paper stock to a battery of tests to determine the best settings to use on the NexPress 2100 press. To help customers achieve the best print result on each substrate, NexPress testing teams set ICC color profiles using a spectrophotometer, and determine other variables that take into account each substrate’s size, weight and coating.