At a recent open-house at AZ Druck und Datentechnik, in Kempten, KBA staged the world premiere of Flying JobChange, which is claimed to reduce job change-over time in sheet-fed offset “practically to zero”. According to KBA, “even ultra-short runs can thus be handled with an efficiency very close to that of digital print, but without compromising the clear benefits of an offset press, such as higher output, better print quality and a greater substrate and format flexibility”.
This latest productivity leap from the German company is based on DriveTronic SPC direct drives for the plate cylinders, exact pre-registration of the plates during changes with DriveTronic Plate-Ident, a few small hardware and software modifications, and sufficient free printing units to enable automated makeready parallel to the current production.
This has already been daily practice at AZ Druck for several months. While the company's 4-colour Rapida 106 perfector is running on units 1 and 3, the plates can be mounted and makeready completed on units 2 and 4. As soon as the specified run length is reached, the “print clean” function is activated automatically to clean off the blankets with a series of about 20 sheets. The operator then presses the button to throw the impression on in units 2 and 4, and production continues with the next job without further interruption. Subsequently, the next round of makeready can be initiated on the first and third units ready for the next job change.
The ability to produce without interruption is said to enable a 4-colour Rapida 106 perfector with Flying JobChange to complete six jobs in the time a 2-colour press without Flying JobChange would require for three. Over a sequence of short-run jobs, therefore, the new development returns 100 per cent higher net performance, though the investment outlay is naturally not double that of the 2-colour press.
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