Gravure briefing

W&H sees success with gravure

Excelsior Packaging Group, of Yonkers, USA, has purchased the first HelioStar GE gravure press sold into the North American market by Windmöller & Hölscher. The machine will be installed at the end of this year and will be fully up and running by January, 2006.

The third generation of HelioStar servo-driven presses, the GE was introduced at the last drupa. The high speed, 10-station gravure press incorporates in-line lamination and in-register reverse side coating and is intended to serve Excelsior's rapidly growing packaging business for food, industrial, medical and healthcare customers.

The press being installed at Excelsior incorporates W&H's EcoPlus system as well as the new RSP (Register Scan Preset) technology, an automatic laser pre-register setting for fast change-over times.

The Heliostar G range of gravure presses was the star at W&H's Gravure Partner Days held last summer in the company's 2,000m² TEC centre in Lengerich, Germany. The modular nature of the presses, which are designed to achieve high print quality combined with high productivity, allows for customized configurations and retrofitting. They are available equipped with up to 12 print stations and with maximum printing widths from 900–1,700mm.

To date, eight of the presses have been sold to customers in Europe, the USA and Australia.

The distinguishing feature of the two models - the GL and GE – is the job change concept. While the GL uses a slide-in cart system equipped with the gravure cylinder and the inking components and inserted into the print station as a complete unit, the GE features Ecoplus automatic press makeready for easy and fast job change-overs. Either the gravure cylinders only or the cylinders and the ink pans are automatically and simultaneously changed on all print stations.

For demonstration purposes, the press at the open house was equipped with five print stations - three GE stations incorporating Ecoplus and two GL stations using slide-in technology.

For fast job change-over on the HelioStar G, the impression roller is changed through an opening in the side frame while tension is being maintained. With PMR (PreMakeReady) incorporated, unused decks can be prepared with the machine running.

Laid out for speeds up to 600m/min and a printing width of 1,300mm, the lab system is capable of printing different substrates.

High capacity dryers are said to ensure perfect drying with minimum residual solvent in the printed product even at high printing speeds. A choice is given of single-hood, double-hood, or jumbo drying systems, depending on specific printing applications. Two high capacity double-hood and one single-hood drying system are incorporated in the lab machine.

The automatic register presetting system (RSP) operates by scanning both the gravure cylinder and the running web. At the press of a button, the individual colours are set to the exact pre-register position.

ERA conference focuses on Eastern Europe

The international ERA (European Rotogravure Association) Packaging Conference 2005 is to be held in the Ukrainian capital of Kiev from November 14-15 .

The Ukraine and Russia are the largest countries in Europe. Both represent significant potential, which cannot be neglected by the gravure industry, says ERA. The markets for flexible packaging in these regions are showing dynamic development. And, since the market is growing, quality demands are becoming higher and print runs are getting longer, so gravure has gained ground, adds the association.

Conference presentations will focus on the development of packaging printing in the Ukraine, Russia and China. In the afternoon, the latest technological developments in the process will be presented by leading international suppliers, including ICC colour management for packaging, different methods of cylinder engraving, and advances in press technology. All presentations will be in English. The conference will conclude on November 15 with a visit to the Kiev based company Ukrplastic, one of the leading flexible packaging printers in Eastern Europe. Full information and booking forms can be found on www.era.eu.org

And in the Middle East several packaging gravure printers from the Emirates and Saudi Arabia have established a Middle East Gravure Forum under the umbrella of ERA. The first meeting was held in Dubai on September 10. The initiative for the forum came from the successful ERA Gravure Conference held in Dubai last March, reports ERA secretary general James Siever.

It is to meet regularly to exchange information on the market situation and discuss technological developments.

Rotomec opens its doors

Bobst group company Rotomec's summer gravure open house attracted over 150 visitors from several countries reports the Italian press builder. Centre stage were the printing demonstrations on the RS 4004, one of the company's most successful models.

Gravure printing demonstrations were run on the nine colour 1,200mm web width RS 4004-E press installed in the technology centre. This electronic shaft (ES) press features fully automatic shaftless winders and a fully automatic trolley change-over system. The RS 4004-E trolleys are designed to be washed in a dedicated washing machine without the need for dismantling any of the inking parts.

The demonstration began with an eight colour job on a 12 micron PET substrate and showed visitors the register stability as the printing speed was gradually increased. After splicing on the rewinder and stopping the machine for the job change, the clock was started so that visitors could keep check of the very short time required to complete a job change. First the press automatically carried out a simultaneous trolley change on all units, then printing began and the clock was stopped when the machine reached the production speed. The job change-over was completed in less than 15 minutes.

With the press still running, the machine operator showed visitors other technical features of the RS 4004-E, such as a press makeready on a redundant unit and the trolley washing.

This latest version of the RS 4004-E includes some important improvements in register control following the full integration of the proven Rotomec ES system with Bobst Integrated S 5100 register control by means of the High Dynamic-Interface feature developed by Rotomec. Previously, the register and press controls were separate units. The result is an extremely fast register correction – five times faster than previously achieved and producing saleable product during the machine acceleration and deceleration stages, claims Rotomec.

In addition to a consistent reduction of production waste and improved productivity, the integration system brings the added advantage of remote control of the register from the operator panel of each printing unit.

Direct engraving gets Hell-O-Box upgrade

In another development from Hell, the Hell-O-Box 700 is a professional interface that can be used to upgrade Ohio 700 series engravers to tiff direct engraving. A Windows PC with an engraving interface is installed alongside the existing IPW workstation of the engraver. The Hell-O-Box enables the Ohio to engrave tiff complete forms such as those supplied by Artpro, PackEdge, Illustrator or HelioCom. It also supports automatic fast crossfeed and can be controlled using Hell job tickets. For even better quality it may be expanded by adding optional functions such as High Quality Hinting for quality optimized engraving or HelioFormproof for layout proofing of Tiff engraving data.

The Janoschka Group has ordered 25 tiff Upgrade Kits for the 20x and 30x model HelioKlischograph systems. The kit equips HelioKlischographs with state-of-the-art electronics for tiff direct engraving. It also offers the option of using the HelioSprint high performance engraving system or High Quality Hinting for boosting text quality.

Janoschka, which engraves cylinders at more than 25 locations in 10 countries, has a total of 88 engravers.

One of its companies – Lusogravura, of Lisbon, - is introducing Hell's new XtremeEngraving process. One of the leading prepress suppliers in Portugal the company specializes in reproduction, cylinder engraving and steel base manufacturing. Hell first implemented XtremeEngraving at the Janoschka Group's head office in Kippenheim. There, the new engraving process underwent a thorough application engineering test and was then launched at Lusogravura, which will use the process in areas such as cylinder engraving for cigarette packaging. In 2004, Lusogravura's 27 employees engraved more than 5,000 cylinders for converters including Alcan, Amcor, Amcor-Rentsch, Iberflex, Lifresca and Monteiro Ribas.

Artwork Systems and Hell in collaboration

Artwork Systems, manufacturer of prepress software, and Hell Gravure Systems, supplier of systems for engraving gravure cylinders, have agreed to collaborate in developing a 3D-Rip for direct laser engraving of packaging gravure cylinders.

Hell unveiled the prototype of a laser engraver, which forms gravure cells directly in a copper or chromium surface, at drupa last year. A world first, the system features laser controls which enable the creation of gravure cells whose depth and area profiles can largely be defined at will and independently of each other.

Artwork Systems will work with Hell in developing a 3D-Rip that is able to make use of the full potential of the laser engraver.

According to Guido Van der Schueren, chairman of Artwork Systems: "This agreement should result in an additional revenue of approximately e500, 000 over the next 18 months."

The collaboration between the two companies is not new. They have been working together on joint development projects for the last 12 years. Tiff direct engraving is one of the successes that has now become firmly established as a global standard in packaging gravure, claim the partners.