Printing MagneCote Digital

Have your customers asked for printed magnets? If they have, Nekoosa Coated Products has a solution that could be compatible with your existing dry toner/laser presses. It’s called MagneCote® Digital. It’s the world’s first premagnetized paper.  

MagneCote® Digital Premagnetized paper 

is available from distributors of 

 Nekoosa Coated Products. 

This light weight, non-rubber magnet is an economical alternative to the traditional heavy magnets. Because it’s already premagnetized, you can skip the magnetizing process. That saves time and money. More importantly, by offering MagneCote® Digital, your customers won’t have to wait. Ready-to-use magnets literally come right off of the press.

On many popular printers, MagneCote® Digital  is easy to run.    We have compiled a list of print equipment on which printers have successfully run our premagnetized paper. To learn if MagneCote® Digital is compatible with your press, call Nekoosa Coated Products at 800-826-4886.  Many digital press operators have mastered running MagneCote® on their dry toner/laser print platforms. They have learned that trouble-free operation requires attention to detail. Fastidiousness in process control is why some printers are more successful than others while operating identical presses.

“Printing MagneCote® Digital is not the type of product that you can load into a copier and walk away,” says Traci Biolo of Quality Plus Printing in Wisconsin Rapids, WI. “Running it requires paying a little attention to what you are doing.” Quality Plus Printing prints MagneCote® Digital on their Konica Minolta Bizhub C5500.

Traci has considerable experience in running MagneCote® Digital.  We would like to share some tips and tricks that we learned from her and our other loyal customers. We would also like to dispel any misconceptions that people may have about printing premagnetized paper .

Sheets Sticking in the Press

The most common problem that operators have is when the sheet sticks  to some metal part in the press.   Depending on the make and model, some presses have more steel parts than others.  If your press has a lot of steel, the magnetic sheet will likely stick to those parts.  That’s what magnets do! For these digital print platforms, MagneCote® Digital will not be compatible.   

The solution is to create some type a barrier between the premagnetized material and the metal parts of the press. Nekoosa Coated Products does offer shield kits for the following digital production machines that contain metal in the paper path:

• Kodak NexPress (shield only)
• Xerox iGen (includes a DVD turorial and shields)

Many machines have primarily plastic components so a shield kit  unnecessary. It is important to watch for any metal surfaces in the feeder. In that section of the press, you can simply tape card stock over that area.

"If a shield kit is not available, you can fabricate a makeshift shield," says Traci Biolo. "To run MagneCote® Digital on our  Bizhub 5500, we made a shield using chipboard. You can't always do that. On our new Bizhub 1070 there is so much steel that we couldn't possibly cover all of the steel surfaces that we would need to cover to make it work."  

Overcoming High Heat

Melting of the magnetic layer is another issue that printers encounter.   The heat in a dry toner press  fuses the toner to the sheet. In some presses, high heat can soften  and melt the ferrite layer on the MagneCote® Digital sheet.  The hotter the press gets, the more likely it is that the sheets will skew. High heat can also cause the magnetic layer to stick to parts of the press and jam in the fuser. 

To overcome the problems associated with high heat, MagneCote® Digital features a special coating on the ferrite layer, designed to stabilize the sheet.  This coating will give added protection from the fuser heat, enabling it to run through select digital equipment. Knowing the relative age of the press that you are running is critical. If it runs hotter, the simplest solution for overcoming high heat problems is to just turn the temperature setting on your printer to its lowest to mid-range setting, if possible.

On printers that have a complex feed path, you may need to use the bypass feeder, only feeding five to ten sheets at a time. On some models, continual feeding may result in the sheets sticking and jamming.

“Hand feeding is obviously time-consuming,” says Dave Pryor, President of Quality Plus Printing.  “MagneCote®  Digital is not designed for long production runs. For the big jobs we run MagneCote® on one of our offset presses.” (Click here to learn more about standard MagneCote.)

Sheet Sensors

Another issue that is encountered when printing MagneCote® Digital on some presses  is that the sheet sensors cannot see the black backside of the sheet. This isn’t much of a problem at all. On these presses, we recommend that the operator turns off the two sheet sensor, if possible. Contact your machine provider for instructions. In majority of cases, this should not affect your print run.

Will the Magnetic Field Distort the Imaging?

Some problems are real and some aren’t.  The ones that aren’t are called myths. One myth that we would like to dispel is that the magnetic field of the premagnetized sheet will distort the imaging.  Now it’s true that a strong magnetic field can conceivably affect the imaging. To do that would take one strong magnetic. While MagneCote® Digital is a premagnetized paper, its magnetic field is not even strong enough for one sheet to stick to another. Obviously, this feature allows for unimpeded feeding of the MagneCote® sheets.

Conclusion

Here are some final tips when running MagneCote® Digital:

• Before you run MagneCote® Digital, be sure to condition the stock. All that means is that when you bring the material into your shop, open up the package and allow the substrate to stabilize to the environment. This is especially important in the winter, when you are bringing in material from a cold warehouse into a warm shop.

• MagneCote® Digital is available in three gauges: 11 Pt., 13 Pt. and 17 Pt. Each thickness comes in both 8.5 x 11 and 12 x 18 sheet sizes. In many cases, we recommend the running 13Pt.    This thickness is comprised of an 80# Cover sheet. That extra paper weight along with the magnetic coating gives the sheet better dimensional stability. For this reason, the sheet lays flatter and so it is less likely to jam.  Keep in mind, though, that each press is a little different.  The thickness that runs best in your press really depends on your machine. 

• Some print equipment is just too slow to run MagneCote® Digital. To run our premagnetized paper, a machine must be capable of running at least 60 pages per minute. At a slower speed the premagnetized sheet is exposed for too much time and, consequently, too much heat in the fuser section. When that happens, the magnetized layer gets too hot and could soften or melt. That’s when a jam occurs.

• Before you print MagneCote® Digital, make sure your printer can handle heavier substrates. Running 13 pt. MagneCote® Digital, for example, requires a press capable of handling a  300 gsm sheet. When you run MagneCote® Digital, set your printer to the heaviest paper weight setting.

• Some presses are just finicky. MagneCote® Digital often runs better from one paper tray versus another, depending on the design of the press. Usually the paper tray that provides the straightest paper path, works best. For this reason,  you may need to do a little experimentation. Try running the sheet in the different trays to see which works best.

• As you open the package of MagneCote® Digital, pay attention to the printed sheet indicating sheet direction. 8.5 x 11 sheets usually run better wide width first. 12 x 18 sheets, on the other hand, usually run better feeding the narrow width first. If the sheet doesn’t run properly, try changing the sheet orientation.

• “Before loading MagneCote into the press, get into the habit of inspecting the stack and fanning the sheets,”  suggests Traci Biolo.

• As you are loading the press, remove the sheets from the packaging in the same direction as it comes off of the stack. This prevents the polarity of the printed sheets from causing offsetting in the output tray. This will also make for easier trimming.

• As the printed sheets of MagneCote® Digital come off of the press, remove them from the output tray before they build up and jog the sheets in the stack. On some presses you may need to cover up any steel parts in the output tray.

MagneCote® Digital provides your shop with new sales opportunities for applications such as calendars, business cards, emergency numbers and sport schedules. To test and evaluate this material, Nekooska Coated Products offers 10 sheet trial packs. That way, you can try MagneCote® Digital risk free.  To request your sample kit, contact us at samples@ncpedge.com.   If you have questions or need service, please do not hesitate to call Nekoosa customer service at 800-826-4886. Or visit us on the web at www.nekoosacoated.com.  

Download the MagneCote® Digital Technical Data Sheet.
Download the MagneCote® Sales Sheet.

For HP Indigo printing, see how MagneCote iSeries prints magnets right off of the press!

Nekoosa Coated Products: Headquartered in Nekoosa, Wisconsin, Nekoosa Coated Products is known for 45 years of innovation in carbonless paper technology and more recently an expanding line of specialty products. The portfolio of specialty products includes: Synaps® OM and Synaps® Digital XM, premium synthetic papers from AGFA; MagneCote®, the world’s first magnetic paper; a full line of FSC®-certified (Forest Stewardship Council) digital coated papers and other specialty papers. Wingate Partners of Dallas, Texas acquired Nekoosa Coated Products in October of 2012. For more information on Nekoosa Coated Products, visit www.nekoosacoated.com or view our educational videos at Nekoosa Coated Products YouTube Channel

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