As a result of the partnership Tilia Labs CEO Sagen de Jonge said that Indigo uses can now “accurately determine the breaking point between conventional and digital printing, maximise press time and materials, and instantaneously reimpose jobs as changes in the production environment dictate.”

Now that the Canadian software developer’s nesting suite has been approved by HP, as well as being able to purchase from Tilia resellers, it can be licensed direct from HP’s PrintOS platform.

Since its inception, Phoenix readily integrates with all workflows and MIS and has been compatible with a wide range of digital presses, however to ensure full HP connectivity Tilia worked closely with HP to develop JDF output capabilities and dynamic nesting and ganging algorithms to support the various Indigo print engines across different product segments.

For example, label enhancements to Phoenix include a ‘frame optimisation’ algorithm to minimise label roll material and click-charges for smaller order quantities by optimising the lanes; and for publishing web-fed applications Phoenix can now auto-impose orders and optimise the roll material by dynamically imposing in lanes for digitally printed books.

Existing Phoenix features include, for carton printers, dynamic nesting and die generation, varnish/coating blanket creation, auto-calculated CAD-based step-and-repeat, intelligent artwork-to-dieline snapping, and a die template library with pattern matching to find and re-use inventoried standing dies.

While commercial sheetfed Indigo users can benefit from dynamic imposition, template-free just-in-time planning, cost-based evaluation of digital versus conventional, auto-calculation of creep compensation, configurable binding edges, and custom folding patterns via a GUI or directly through its API.

Although HP’s SmartStream workflow does have its own basic imposition/ganging function, Tilia said that Phoenix has a number of unique planning tools and fully automated the process to dynamically nest and impose. This enables it to automatically combine and gang orders according to the varying sheet sizes and roll widths offered by the Indigo portfolio.

“We are very excited to establish this powerful relationship with Tilia Labs, offering HP Indigo digital press owners innovation, efficiency and confidence for production challenges, including sophisticated ganging, device profiling and specialised imposition requirements,” said Patrick Canfield, R&D program manager, strategic accounts, HP Indigo.

The HP partnership follows Tilia Labs expanding cutting table compatibility with the latest release of its Griffin wide-format print and cut nesting and ganging workflow, which added Summa integration.