TAGA Technology & Innovation Series
The cancellation of the TAGA Annual Technical Conference occurred just days after COVID-19 was declared a pandemic and travel restrictions were tightened. Because speakers were ready with great content that still deserves to be shared, TAGA’s officers quickly devised a plan to make that possible, starting with virtual presentations by the keynote speakers.
The TAGA Technology & Innovation Series takes place April 27–30, 2:00–3:00 p.m. Eastern U.S. Time. The lead speaker is Todd Fayne, Principal Engineer at PepsiCo. Todd will present Circular Economy and Sustainability Solutions in Packaging and discuss the company’s effort to develop recyclable packaging for its multi-billion-dollar snack food business.
Also slated to speak are Juanita Parris, R&D executive for Sun Chemical; David Crawley, innovation expert at University of Houston’s College of Technology; and Craig Reid, founder of CTR Resources and authority on inkjet developments and applications in industrial printing.
Registration is free, so sign up now. We are recording the presentations so that registrants can listen to them later if needed. You can review descriptions and register for the series at www.taga.org/tech-series. If you have questions, contact TAGA Administrator John Bodnar at taga@printing.org.
Presentation Videos
Since the 2020 TAGA Annual Technical Conference was cancelled just prior to its start, most presenters had already prepared their presentations. As such, we invited presenters to video record their presentations so that we can not only make the content available, but also meet a requirement that will allow us to publish their papers in the 2020 TAGA Proceedings. We anticipate that most presenters will submit a video by the end of April, after which we will post them on the TAGA website for access by TAGA members and conference registrants. Watch for an email announcing access to the videos. The Proceedings containing the associated papers will be available this fall.
Board of Directors Updates
As TAGA moves into its 73rd year, new individuals have joined the board of directors. The addition of new individuals as other board members finish their terms brings fresh perspective as the organization makes decisions about its future. The new board members joining us in 2020 are Nick Gawreluk, Dr. Ruoxi Ma, and Rory Marsoun.
Nick Gawreluk fell in love with print in high school and has never looked back. His involvement with TAGA started at RIT where he was chapter president in 2011. His professional background spans four continents throughout business management roles with Mimeo, HP Indigo, and Heidelberg. He currently calls Germany home and is working at Heidelberg’s world headquarters as the Global Sales Operations Manager.
Dr. Ruoxi “Rachel” Ma has been an assistant professor in the Graphic Communication Department at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo since fall 2018. Prior to that, she was a graduate student in the Paper and Printing Science Program at Western Michigan University. During the four years of her graduate study, she presented her research paper for TAGA 2015 at Memphis and TAGA 2016 at Houston. Rachel greatly enjoyed her involvement in TAGA as a graduate student. She embraced the enormous enthusiasm and professionalism around the TAGA family and is excited to take it further to her scholarship as a professor.
Rory Marsoun is the Director of Business Development—Flexo, Americas for Esko, a Danaher Company. In his role, Rory determines the direction of Esko’s flexo business in North and South America, acting as a liaison with the company’s product development staff in Germany. Rory has been with Esko for 10 years, starting as a flexo specialist. Rory came to Esko from Clemson University, where he was a lecturer and research associate in the Department of Graphic Communications and Sonoco Institute. He earned both his MBA and BS, Graphic Communications at Clemson.
With the new board additions there are also departures by board members that have made important contributions.
Brian Lawler, the long-time advisor for Cal Poly’s TAGA chapter, announced his resignation from the board. Brian will be entering retirement in June after 14 years of teaching at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. We thank Brian for being a dedicated board member throughout the years and wish him a happy retirement.
Don Schroeder resigned from the board late last year as his responsibilities with FUJIFILM increased and he saw the amount of time he could devote to TAGA dwindling. He has been generous with his time (a board member since 2015), advice, and donations (FUJIFILM provided our conference signage). Don remains a TAGA supporter, and we hope that TAGA can be helpful to him over the rest of his career.
Brenda Pang with the Advanced Printing Technology Centre Ltd (APTEC) in Hong Kong also departed from the board as she finished her second three-year term. Brenda was our lone board member in Asia, and she would stay up late at night to participate in board calls. Brenda was a great help in alerting Chinese colleagues about TAGA and helping solicit speakers, members, and attendees.
TAGA will miss the involvement of all three individuals. With the recent additions and departures the TAGA Board is now comprised of 23 individuals. The board roster is available at www.taga.org/board.
Featured Paper: Water-Based Soy Inks for Packaging
Delivered by Professor Alexandra Pekarovicova at the 2019 TAGA Annual Technical Conference, Water-Based Soy Inks for Packaging examines whether the VOCs emitted when using water-based inks for printing linerboard and other packaging substrates can be reduced without sacrificing print characteristics. The research was conducted by a team from Western Michigan University—Rahul Pingale, Alexandra Pekarovicova, and Dan Fleming—working with Veronika Husovska of American Ink and Technology.
The majority of commercial water-based inks are formulated with acrylic resins, synthetic colorants, solvents/water, and additives. The acrylic resins emit volatile organic compounds (VOCs) into the air and have synthetic resins that are not biodegradable. Soybean protein is a renewable raw material that could partially or fully replace acrylic emulsion resins in water-based ink.
To see how viable soy protein is as a component in water-based inks the research team formulated the letdown portion of a fluid blue packaging ink with increasing percentages (10%, 20%, up to 100%) of soy protein in the acrylic emulsion. The inks were then printed on recycled coated board, along with a fully acrylic formulation, using a flexo hand proofer. The ink’s printability, rheology, and use properties were tested and compared.
The findings showed that most of the end-use properties were comparable between acrylic and soy/acrylic inks. Viscosity and pH stability over time were comparable. Adhesion determined by a tape test was slightly worse for the soy/acrylic mixed vehicle inks. There was a small and acceptable color difference (<1 ∆Ecmc) between the control acrylic ink and the test inks.
Members can read the nine-page paper in the 2019 TAGA Proceedings (page 157 of the CD Proceedings file) or access it via the online abstract search (must log in to download the full paper).
2021 TAGA Annual Technical Conference
TAGA’s 2021 conference is scheduled for March 14–17 at the Sheraton Downtown Hotel in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma USA. This is the same location as for this year’s cancelled event.
The hotel is within walking distance of many of the city’s entertainment and cultural venues. Oklahoma City is a thriving city of 1.4 million people located in the Great Plains region of the U.S. While thought of as “out West,” the city is actually equally distant from Los Angeles and New York City.
