A Quick Trip to the ‘Enhanced’ Galaxy

Advanced technologies continue to improve and become even more sophisticated. This is definitely so for the enduring R+D work focused on reducing the banknote counterfeit threat.

And the pace of change has not slowed down, as we see recent technical developments in the Galaxy™ thread have brought a richer, faster, and more brilliant dimension to the thread.

Louisenthal has been known to develop a sophisticated range of security arsenal from the diversity of watermarks, through to threads, foils, windows and hidden features. In the quest for enhancing the Galaxy thread, the key elements remain:

• ColourShift effects which combine to provide a highly attractive and user-friendly feature

• motifs which appear at various depths on the foil and the graphic elements can be viewed from all angles

• a truly three-dimensional thread with 360° authentication

• can be optioned with machine readable functionality through magnetic coding (MultiCode™)

• last but not least, advanced micro-mirror technology, but now with a perceptible difference.

Galaxy incorporates a complex enhancement of micro-mirror technology. This innovation comprises an array of tiny micro-mirrors created using advanced origination techniques which reflect light in a specific manner defined by the size and orientation of the mirrors. The light is reflected via a variety of carefully selected angles and orientations.

In the new version of Galaxy, an improved mirror orientation provides a brighter impression. The revised flat mirror pitches can achieve much faster dynamics, in fact doubling the speed of the original. The flip effect is now quicker than first generation. And the 3D looks deeper and more detailed and the colours are more intense.

Galaxy threads can also be fully registered in the paper, ensuring uniform positioning of the different motifs in the banknotes and defined recognition from top to bottom (eg. in the Honduras 200 lempira, the icon always appears in the same window).

The design platforms are still available in three versions (see above), but all with enhanced colour and movement. Galaxy Saturn supports the dynamic perception of basic shapes such as circular rings. Galaxy Custom offers three dimensional country-specific symbols or text elements. And in Galaxy Flip, the motif distinctly shifts, making it appear to float in space.

The first generation Galaxy has been issued in 14 countries across several denominations, and there is already strong interest in the new enhanced version.