Harvey W. Dahlgren,
Epic
Products CEO
" My brother and I were able
to take the application these people had struggled and struggled
with,
point it in a different
direction and develop a fix that was remarkable for the industry at the
time."
During the early 60s and 70s, in collaboration with his brother
Harold, Mr. Dahlgren developed the new process of continuous
dampening. In the 80s, working with his son Tyler, Harvey
did it again by developing the Epic
Delta system, which has
proven
to be equally revolutionary to the lithographing process,
and improved the quality of printed products from album covers
to
credit cards to beverage cans. After 35 years, the printing
industry icon still takes an active interest in Epic Delta's
ambitious
ongoing R&D programs. Mr. Dahlgren thinks the firm
may be very close to cracking the technology barrier on
such long-sought
breakthroughs as "keyless inking". He recently
took a brief look back at his long career and a few peeks
into the
future of printing.
"The
thing I like about printing is that so many things go on in
this business that we simply do not understand. Even after
500 years, lithography itself remains a natural phenomenon
we have many suspicions about, but no finalized science. Twenty
years or so ago, when we picked up the rights to the Delta
system that a California group had abandoned in frustration,
we were working on pure instincts and suspicions that the technology
would show good results. We refocused the original system from
inking to dampening and then perfected and refined it. We knew
right away we had a product that was going to be successful,
but we didn't realize just how lucky we were during our first
trial runs. A lot of the critical things we got right initially
had to be fine-tuned very deliberately as demand grew for the
product. These were all very laborious problems to solve and
during those early days we lived on the job with folks breathing
down our necks."
"The
team effort was tremendous. It's important for people to keep
in mind that all our success has resulted from the labor of
many dedicated people. It's finally being recognized that there's
more to this distinctive dampening process than putting water
on the plate. Again, just why it so substantially improves
quality is not fully understood. Customers loved the "hickey" elimination
results, because for the first time, 99 percent of paper could
be printed on without fear of rejection. But the waste-prevention
and resultant cost-savings were less impressive to a lot of
folks than the actual enhancement of the final visual product.
I think it's safe to say that the credit cards in your billfold
and the smart cards you use to get into your hotel room were
all printed with the Epic Delta process. Essentially, we took
the crap shoot factor out of printing on both plastic and metal,
and made the outcomes predictable, a very important consideration
when you look at the money saved in time and materials. I've
really enjoyed seeing the contributions the Epic Delta process
has made towards helping our customers all over the world with
their printing challenges."
"Almost
all the metal decorating in Australia today shows our "value-added",
as does much high-end packaging elsewhere. I can remember back
when you'd pick up a box in a grocery store or a record jacket
and it would still feel unclean and gritty from the spray powder
that gave physical separation to the sheets in the old days.
One contribution of the Epic Delta team and it always was a
team effort was to eliminate that sandpaper feel by developing
the first coating system to apply aqueous coatings in-line
on an offset press. The slicker cosmetic feel that is industry
standard today first came about when we figured out how our
coater-dampeners could add a water-based scuff-resistant sheen.
Printing is like I said - more than just a business. It's been
a life-long series of investigative work for us, and we still
enjoy it. We've been fiddling with keyless inking now for almost
35 years. Our people tell us technology convergences have put
that goal almost within their reach. Certainly, such quests
keeps life interesting, to say the least."
