ContiTech’s groundbreaking new product for printing securities, high-quality film embossing (hot and cold film) and sheetfed printing is an enhanced printing blanket with a cover layer made of tiny glass beads! The Black Pearl glass-bead printing blanket is extremely resilient and durable, antistatic and ISEGA-certified (i.e. free of pollutants and non-hazardous to health). It’s manufactured at ContiTech Elastomer Coatings in Northeim, Germany and is sold via ContiTech sales to printing shops all over the world – including Canada. The company added that the new blanket guarantees a smooth printing process and minimum downtimes. The blanket has 7,000 glass beads per square centimetre.
ContiTech added that it’s the only manufacturer worldwide that can produce a precision printing blanket of this type and quality. “Glass is antistatic and is also a material with a very high surface hardness. This makes glass the number one material for this special field of application,” said Area Manager Michael Simm (pictured previously), responsible at ContiTech for the distribution of the new product. “The secret lies in the extremely fine, uniform coating. Roughly 7,000 ultra-fine glass beads per square centimetre are anchored in the cover layer – each with the same exact diameter. The key is the completely uniform distribution of the glass beads and their special anchoring in the base,” he added.
Black Pearl is resistant not only to enormous embossing pressure but also to temperatures of up to 160 °C – as well as all printing chemicals including benzine, acetone and oil. And because packaging is a particularly sensitive issue in the foodstuffs industry, ContiTech has all printing blankets for the packaging industry inspected by an independent testing institute to ensure they meet legal requirements. As a result, Black Pearl has been awarded with the ISEGA certificate, which, as mentioned, verifies that it’s free of pollutants and non-hazardous to health.
