Holo-pack•Holo-print® 2011, the Holography Conference and Exhibition, attracted more than 130 delegates from 21 countries. The event was held in the Aria Hotel and Resort located on ‘The Strip’ in Las Vegas, USA. This choice of location inspired the theme of the conference - Improving Your Odds with Holography.

---

 The conference was spread over two days and was split into four half-day sessions covering Holographic Packaging, Security, Display Holography and Markets & Strategies. This review provides a summary of all the papers, which were of high interest and quality, so that even the final conference paper presented by Glenn Wood (Funding for Holography’s Future) on Friday afternoon was attended by more than 50 delegates - a fitting testimony to the interest level in the topics presented at a time when most are rushing away to catch a plane.

Michael Lorca of GlaxoSmithKline presented a case study titled Holographic Alternative for Aquafresh Toothpaste.

 

He indicated that the new UV casting process brings a raft of bene?ts including 25% cost saving, a lower carbon footprint and the packaging is easily recycled because there is no metal content. This latter bene?t ensure no interference with RFID, as required by Walmart. A ?nal bene?t is the availability of brighter whites in areas where the bleached board substrate is allowed to shine through.

 

John Hopkinson of Diversified Graphic Machinery reinforced many of these points in his presentation titled Cast & Cure - Making Holographic Packaging Affordable.

 

DGM machines are now made in Chicago and Turin, Italy, and produce a holographic effect on packaging which is environ-mentally friendly. Apparently this is the number one requirement by retailers such as Walmart and Carrefour. From a design point of view, the emergence of brilliant whites cannot be overstated. Not only is the impact on shelf appeal measurable but it also allows natural skin tones to be rendered with inks, something which is dificult to achieve when printed on opaque white pigments.

 

John Hazen of Hazen Papers described how Holography Lifts Beyoncé Fragrance. This case-study provided valuable insight into the design process involved in creating the right design statement for a celebrity product. This innovative presentation made use of video clips of the Curtis Packaging CEO John Giusto explaining how Hazen holographer Xuan Li was able to interpret holographically the energy of a pulse of electricity that appealed to the star whose name appears on this Coty product.

 

Haiming Zhang of Holoart, China was due to speak in the subject Holographic Packaging takes New Life in China. He was unable to be present owing to US late issuance of his US visa so his paper was presented by Glenn Wood of Reconnaissance. The presentation described the resurgence of interest in holographic packaging following the saturation of the market with so-called ‘security’ holographic stickers. This reduced the number of suppliers from around 600 to 100 but the items wrapped in holographic packaging now cover everything from expensive liquors to keyrings. The vastness of the market re?ects the fascination with bright packaging of both buyers and gift recipients in China.

 

Nigel Abraham of 3DCD expounded on the subject of New Generation Origination: Catching the Consumer’s Eye.

 

He described the technology developed for the protection of CD ROM software but now being made avail-able for other applications. Designated cdi (coherent diffractive imaging) this is a fourth-generation origination technology following ruled gratings, optical holography and electron-beam lithography. The technique is capable of producing dazzling effects including mirrors and lenses ideally suited to the newest packing replication technology.

 

John Mercer, Kelly, Anderson & Associates addressed the topic of The Importance of the Use of Holograms in Security Documents.

 

Holograms - or DOVIDs - are now considered a mature technology with a long history of protecting secure documents such as passports, drivers licenses, tax stamps, identity documents etc. They come in opaque form (metalized) to protect and authenticate documents and also in transparent form for the protection of the variable data printed on certain documents. Attention was drawn to the need to implement good training programs so that genuine holograms can be distinguished from poor simulations.

 

Andrii Ivanovsky of EDAPS and Kozue Furuichi of Toppan Printing made a joint presentation about Delivering the Synergy of Holography and RF Tags.

 

It seems that the holograms on such composite devices must be demetalized in order not to interfere with the RFID communication. The proliferation of near ?eld readers in smart phones is encouraging the development of holograms which have the additional functionality (and security) afforded by RF technology.

 

Tal Gilat of Inksure spoke about How to Design Holograms that will increase Profit and Security with Taggant Technology.

 

His point was that the positive and pro?table experience of incorporating machine readable taggants into the hologram of the Ukrainian tax stamps had validated the use of taggants.

 

Anton Goncharsky, Computer Holography Center spoke about Nano-Technology for Automatic Examination of Optical Protection Elements.

 

This involved the accurate shaping of nano relief features to produce spectacular covert laser read features such as a bird ?apping its wings. Such animated covert features are impossible to reproduce and are displayed on the screens of proprietary readers.

 

Ronald Erickson of M-Secure described Enhanced Security with Cyphers and Complexity in Holograms.

 

His esoteric presentation began with the notion of multidimensional holograms which include the three dimensions of x, y and z then add a 4th dimension with color and a 5th dimension using movement. He proceeded to describe high end products and security situations where such a system might ?nd commercial application.

 

Pradip Shroff of PRS Permacel and President of HOMAI invigorated his audience in the last presentation of the day through arm waving and vocalizations. Recharging the Power of Holograms was his chosen topic and related to the observation that the production and sale of security holograms is minuscule in relation to the scale of counterfeiting and illicit trade in branded goods.

 

His proposal was to position holograms as the best value for money when supplied through a partnership alliance between customer and security provider.

 

 

David Jurbergs, Bayer Material Science described the Characteristics of Bayfol HX Photopolymer Film in Commercial Applications.

 

The audience was assured that this innovative material has now been scaled up to web manufacture and is available worldwide in several variants. Various technical data were presented corresponding to materials for different commercial application ranging from Denisyuk recordings to HOEs.

 

Martin Richardson of De Montfort University chose as his topic Defining Silver Halide Technology for Advanced Developments in Volumetric Holography & Applications.

 

He described the resurrected Ilford silver halide material now commercialized under the name of Harman. Apparently, the new film shows good performance in the red and green spectral regions but is still lacking in the blue region. Of more interest were his ‘hyperspectral’ holograms combining volume structures with embossing. The compression of the Bragg planes in the volume hologram by the embossing process results in images invisible in white light, so useable for security purposes.

 

Richardson extolled the virtue of Emmett Leith’s ‘holographic octopus’- a diagram indicating all the aspects of life in which holograms are relevant.

 

Harlan Papert of Lynx Brazil read the paper prepared by Sergio Oliveira who was denied an entry visa to attend the conference. The subject Improving the Game with a New Photopolymer expanded on the development work carried out by Polygrama in Brazil over the last 10 years. Mr Papert pro-vided some technical details relating to the new photopolymer material culminating in the announcement that Kodak has now produced experimental quantities for test purposes. A considerable group formed around the speaker following his presentation, all requesting samples.

 

Javid Khan of Holoxica Ltd (whose US visa application was delayed) remained in the UK yet made a presentation via Skype on Animated Holographic 3D Displays.

 

This company is a spin off from Heriot Watt University in Scotland and produces holographic recordings of various interleaved images which are selectively displayed using a dynamic illumination system. Thus, animations or sequential images can be recreated from hard copy printed out using a Geola Holoprinter. The hologram, referred to as a ‘screen’, can be manufactured using classical analog methods, digital printers or even embossing techniques.

 

Nasser Peyghambarian of the University of Arizona spoke about Up-dateable Holographic 3D Display for Telepresence.

 

Prof. Peyghambarian described his sponsored work on the development of an updateable holographic recording medium capable of being refreshed at video speeds of around 30 frames per second. Apparently this has already been achieved although the laser re-cording technology is currently the limiting factor. The research is funded by the Japanese company Nitto Denko.

 

Michael Klug of Zebra Imaging concluded the session with his presentation describing Advances in Static and Dynamic Synthetic Holographic Display.

 

The full color, synthetic imagery produced using the large format Zebra digital printer and photopolymer substrate is well known but what is new is the software package created by Zebra to enable anyone to create their own 3D imagery and send it to Zebra for customised printing. More astonishing was the work described using proprietary screen technology which allowed the creation of dynamic, interactive, real-time holographic images in full color and with full parallax.

 

 

Derek Morgan and Paul Lear of TecScan Electronics presented their Quality Inspection Systems to Reduce Costs and Waste.

 

TecScan has been making in-line quality inspection systems for print applications for 25 years. More recently, they have turned their attention to active QC inspection of hard and soft embossed hologram materials. The system, already deployed by a some major holographic manufacturers, allows for the immediate identification of defects such as shim damage, loss of brightness etc. and the closed loop control of repeat length to an accuracy of 0.1 mm per meter of embossed material.

 

Alkis Lembessis, Director of the Hellenic Institute of Holography in Athens posed the question Realistic Color 3-D Holography: Is It Here?

 

After a richly illustrated talk which included video clips of real examples and demonstrations of actual examples to the audience, the speaker concluded that the answer to his own question was a definite ‘yes’. Having made a serious investment in full-color holographic recording technology without the benefit of the business plan, the results, often holographic recordings of Greek cultural artifacts, are so encouraging that serious projects will now be sought.

 

Günther Dausmann of Hologram Industries Research addressed the topic Holographic Optical Elements for Vehicles: Reality at Last.

 

Although head up displays [HUDs] are widely used in modern aircraft as a way of presenting flights information directly to the pilot, European legislation relating to visibility through car windshields has limited their use in the automotive industry. In this presentation he also described the innovative construction of a transmission hologram created by the conjunction of TWO reflection holograms. Its use is for a rear brake light making it highly visible to the driver behind while not obscuring the view of the driver in the car which has a device installed.

 

Kenji Ueda, Dai Nippon Printing continued the theme of holographic optical elements in his talk Photopolymer HOEs to Improve the Performance of Laser Projectors.

 

The development of low cost LEDs makes them particularly attractive as the light source of choice in projection systems. They are cheaper, more compact and produce less heat than other light sources but suffer from the disadvantage of producing laser speckle in the projected images. The speaker showed how carefully constructed HOEs made from photopolymer can remove this objectionable laser artifact. In addition to the many applications envisaged for holographic optical elements in the automotive industry, this application for projectors is also expected to open up a good market for HOEs.

 

Glenn Wood, Reconnaissance Inter-national concluded the session and the conference with his talk Placing the Bets–Funding for Holography’s Future. He described the various funding options for all types of holographic developments from University research to large-scale commercial manufacture. These include many alternatives ranging from government grants to private investment through the stock exchange and venture capitalists. He considered specific examples drawn from the USA, UK, EU and China. It became apparent that different geo-graphical regions tended to focus on different types of technology, e.g. microscopy and spectrometry based on holographic components is favored in the USA, whereas real-time holographic displays attract funding in Europe.

 

Several exhibitors demonstrated their products and services throughout the conference. These included: Computer Holography Center, Dardedze Holografija, Eskay Holographics, Foshan Sanjian Packaging, General Vacuum Equipment, Giriraj Foils, IHMA, InkSure, Optaglio, Shantou Yiming Holotech Machine and Telic.

 

Hazen Paper produced and sponsored the Holo-pack•Holo-print® brochure, and 3D AG sponsored the Proceedings.

 

All these presentations are available on CD or FTP download. The price if you did not attend is €494/$672/£395. Contact: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it