An eye for detail

Last year, a nine-colour Windmöller & Hölscher gravure printing press installed in the manufacturing facility of Amcor Flexibles Asia Pacific, located in Preston, Australian, was equipped with the newly developed Eltromat regi star 20 register control. The company also opted for a significant upgrade of the existing Eltromat video inspection system, web video 3000.

Amcor has seven business groups with 35,000 employees at more than 300 production sites in 43 countries. The group of companies was established in 1860 by Samuel Ramdsen in Melbourne, under the name of Australian Paper Manufacturers (APM). It was renamed as Amcor Limited in 1986 and, today, is a global player. Following the acquisition of Alcan Packaging in 2009, the group was able to increase its earnings recently to more than Aus$14 billion.

The Amcor factory was set up in 1989 in Preston, Victoria, and specialises in flexible packaging, which is gravure printed and extrusion laminated. Currently, it is producing innovative packaging formats on two presses, one Rotomec and one Windmöller & Hölscher, and mainly serves the food and beverage industry.

Orders from customers, such as Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), National Food, Nestlé, PepsiCo and Unilever, are for large quantities of flexible packaging that must meet high expectations in terms of quality and appearance.

Paper and plastics such as low density, or polyester films, are used to produce Preston’s monthly output of around 5 million running metres.

For Julian Dunwill, operations manager at Amcor Flexibles in Preston for two years, the decision in favour of the Eltromat systems regi star 20 and enhancing the existing web video 3000 presented a welcome upgrade. He saw it as an investment during a recession to prepare for the expected economic upswing with cutting edge technology.

“Our customer requirements with regard to quality and delivery times are constantly increasing. Innovation as well as absolute precision and reliability are crucial for register control and web inspection,” says Mr Dunwill. “As early as summer 2008, which was shortly after the systems were launched in Europe, the Eltromat sales management and its Australian agency OPTI-Flex told us about the high performance potential of the new Eltromat solutions regi star 20 and the possibility to easily upgrade the existing web video 3000 system. This was of great interest, as our primary objectives were the decisive improvement of set-up times, quality and waste, and achieving competitive advantage.”

A successful project throughout all phases

Mr Dunwill continues: “The web video 3000 is now equipped with the Eltromat back light illumination system and the ‘image lock’ sensor module, which has increased our confidence and flexibility when using the system in automatic defect detection mode.”

The service function runs smoothly, too, he says. “Eltromat is thousands of kilometres away from us, and we cannot afford production downtime of several days while waiting for missing spare parts. The systems must run and function at 100%. The support that we experienced from Eltromat and OPTI-Flex in all project phases was more than exemplary.”

The new register control system reduces waste during set-up, start-up and speed changes by automatically adapting the control parameters and adjustment speeds to various machine statuses. A future possibility is to link the regi star 20 with the latest web inspection system webvideo star 2000;

it will allow full automation of precise register adjustment, even with printing width and skew sensitive materials.

The automatic fine tuning (aft) module of the webvideo star 2000 measures the register on both sides with high precision after the correct measuring point is determined by regi star 20. Printing width and skew position can then be calculated.

Eltromat, with its partners in Australia OPTI-Flex, is now offering the video platform webvideo star 2000. The digital system technology is designed to improve illumination of the image section on the printed web.

The Eltromat video systems feature a homogeneous backlight strobe for transparent materials, avoiding shadow formation and reflections. Consequently, users can benefit from ‘significant’ time savings during job preparation and set-up, the company explains.

Eltromat also has the highly advanced and flexible, ‘image lock’ sensor, which delivers stable image and the possibility to reliably deliver automatic defect detection, even on extensible webs and materials. Geoff Bastin from OPTI-Flex stated that interest from Amcor and other converters in Australia has been positive, with the first new system being delivered in July 2010.

The good response is thanks to the high interest in time saving and waste reduction at all aspects of the production process, says Mr Bastin.