Packaging printers from the UK and South Korea recently attended an open house event at the KBA facility in Radebeul, Germany, to learn about the company's latest innovations for printing and finishing of packaging products.
The first print demonstration by KBA was a 6-colour Rapida 145 with inline coater. This large format press was seen in operation at up to 17,000 sheets/hour on 250 and 600g/m2 substrates. Highlights included a fast job changeover with simultaneous plate changing using DriveTronic SPC, and different coating effects based on KBA's latest UV technology.
The switch from a dispersion coating for the first job to matt gloss special effects for the second was accomplished "in next to no time", despite also requiring conversion from conventional to UV coating in the coater tower. Another feature catering for situations typical in packaging printing was non-stop pile changing at the feeder and delivery, in combination with fully automatic substrate logistics.
The next demonstration was a 6-colour Rapida 106 coater press with a raised foundation for increased pile heights. After production at full speed with a 350g/m2 GD2 board, a job using heavy display board with a thickness of almost 1mm was printed at 13,000 sheets/hour and finished with drip-off effect coating (oil-based overprint varnish through the last inking unit and gloss dispersion coating in the coater). Again, the presentation spotlighted the fully automatic non-stop and logistics systems.
Finally, the open house visitors witnessed a 6-colour Rapida 106 in a double-coating configuration with inline ColdFoiler unit. After simple dispersion coating, a 5-colour folding carton for hair colouring was refined by adding a coldfoil finish. The special feature of this process was the optimisation of foil application by way of web splitting (division into several narrower ribbons, which can then be aligned precisely to the areas of the printed sheet requiring foil); and MFU (multiple foil use), running the foil web through the impression gap several times, which minimises foil consumption by reducing the area left unused.
