Automatic Production of Photo Post Card – fastCard 9500 hits the pace

The market potential is enormous. In 2005 alone, 14.8 billion post and greeting cards were made worldwide. 2 % of them (270 millions) were customized and printed on real photo paper; this percentage will certainly grow over the next few years. In particular in the USA, Great Britain and Japan it is an absolute must for both companies and individuals to send Christmas greetings. In Great Britain alone more than 750 millions Christmas cards were posted for Christmas. This business extends to individual post and greeting cards for Easter, birthdays, weddings and other occasions.

With the new fastCard 9500, Imaging Solutions, the worldwide market leader in the field of digital high-speed systems for the photofinishing industry, introduces a powerful device for the automatic production of post cards in purePhoto quality. fastCard 9500 is the most recent result of the Imaging Solutions’ PURUS concept, allowing highly efficient production of value added photo products on real photo paper.

fastCard 9500 enables you to glue customized printed photo paper images to a pre-printed writable backing paper with a fully automatic high-speed process. This is done directly from the photo paper roll at a speed of up to 9,500 post cards, fi-nal format 9.7 x 14.4 cm (3.8" x 5.7") per hour. The produc-tion of larger final formats, e.g. of 9.7 x 16.6 cm (3.8" x 6.5") and 9.7 x 20.6 cm (3.8" x 8.11") are also possible.

With the digital exposure systems fastPrint and widePrint from Imaging Solutions, photos can also be exposed with in-dividual texts on real photo paper and in purePhoto quality. This is a prerequisite for an efficient production of customized photo post cards.

fastCard 9500 applies an adhesive automatically to the back of the photo paper and glues the photo to the post card paper. Cards are then automatically cut and stacked in one of the two containers. fastCard 9500 recognizes when the post card storage container is full and changes automatically to the empty one.

Like all high-speed systems from Imaging Solutions, fastCard 9500 can be easily integrated into existing work-flows and order management systems.