Wipak wins with new Flexotecnica

“Striking” printing results are said to have been achieved this June at the Flexotecnica premises in Italy during commissioning and acceptance trials of a new press for Wipak UK. The fully sleeved and gearless 8NG model with eight colours plus two downstream units was tested and then delivered to the company in July.

Finnish owned Wipak specializes in the production of printed film packaging for the perishable food sector. The company employs around 70 people at its plant in Welshpool. The press from Flexotecnica forms part of an expansion progamme.

The machine has eight colours around the drum and two downstream flexo units to apply continuous or in-register patterned varnish, lacquers or coatings to either front or reverse surfaces. This allows Wipak to offer its customers “a wide range of achievable configurations in high quality printing flexible packaging products”.

The NG is a new generation sleeve gearless press with a print width of 1,300mm and printing repeats from 370-900mm, designed to achieve high printing performance with great stability. The press operates with a gearless drive servo system, is fitted for the tool-free quick change of printing and anilox sleeves eased by pneumatic ejectors, and includes a Speedy Clean automatic wash-up system and Viscolor 2200 computer aided viscosity controls. All these features are designed to assist operators in performing quick job change-over and fast set-up times.

Colour monitoring and register is controlled by the latest eltromat Meshcon_3 video camera/register system, which is said to ensure “ultra accurate” printing and quick registration between CI and downstream units during production with minimal waste. Running speeds of up to 400m/min on the wide range of films run by Wipak are assisted by the FNC-3000 computerized print monitoring and management system, and fully automated splicing on both shaftless unwind and rewind units. In-line LEL solvent control, anti static equipment and corona treatment also feature on this advanced Flexotecnica machine.

To increase productivity further, once a run has been completed, the press is put through an automatic wash-up cycle which automatically cleans inking units and anilox rolls, pumps and pipes that the operator has selected, “with minimal solvent consumption”, leaving him free to prepare the press for the next production run.