ToughSonics® Accurately Measure Distance in Cold Foil Printing

The printing industry requires precise sensors to ensure processes can start or stop intentionally. Eagle Systems, based in New Jersey, found success with ToughSonic® ultrasonic sensors for optimizing their cold foil printing operations. 

What's Cold Foil Printing?

The use of foil and other multisensory packaging effects has become more and more common in a crowded marketplace competing for customer attention. Print shops are always in need of a competitive edge—something that allows their services to jump out amongst other print providers.

Cold foil printing is a modern method of printing metallic foil on a substrate to enhance the aesthetic of the final product. Cold foil has become more common in the last few years after evolving from the hot stamping process. The fancy, shiny graphics you see on toothpaste boxes, beauty products, wines and spirits, and many other products are likely done with cold foil printing.

Printing and cold foiling can both be done in a single process, leading to significant cost and time savings. A job that normally would take eight hours and two separate machines to complete—one for printing and one to apply foil—can be accomplished in about 20 minutes with cold foil.

Configurable ToughSonics Provide Benefits for Cold Foiling

When engineering and designing the ECO-Eagle cold foil system, Eagle Systems used a simpler ultrasonic distance sensor until they encountered frequent failures. Needing a better solution, they selected a ToughSonic 3 sensor. After short-term trials, they realized the durability and precise abilities of their ToughSonics.

“To date, we have yet to experience failure of the Senix sensors, and have purchased at least 100, if not more," said Mike King, Founder & CEO of Eagle Systems. "Built-in scaling and filtering makes the system so much easier. The sensors also allow remote programming if different algorithms are needed on our machine. This is helpful as we are constantly upgrading the Eagle with newer features."

Eagle Systems is an international leader in foiling equipment for the packaging and printing industry. The company was started in 1990 by King. As a pioneer of cold foiling produced in 2007, the ECO-Eagle system is fully automatic, simple to use, and does not require an operator console. This type of dynamic machine requires a sensor that is tough, durable, and highly configurable to measure the diameter of the cold foil and monitor when a new role is needed.

Senix ToughSonic ultrasonic level and distance sensors have built in switches that can be set up as sourcing or sinking switches. A user adjusts the switch outputs to trigger when a roll goes over or under threshold. The switch point can be easily set with SensorView™ software or the "TEACH" button.

For more information on how Senix can help with your application, contact us at info@senix.com or click here.