More Capacity with QuickChange
Everybody’s talking about innovations on sheetfed offset presses - higher speeds, larger formats, new automation modules. But what interests printers most of all?
Printers want to differentiate themselves from their competitors so that price is not the only factor in gaining orders. You can do this by offering your customers as many benefits as possible, Value Added Printing in other words. But of course you still want to have the most cost-efficient production and, since run lengths continue to decline, it seems obvious that the greatest potential for savings is to be found in reducing makeready times.
But in view of the great progress made in automation over the past ten years can makeready times be reduced any further? Yes they can, and very considerably indeed. This is proven by the QuickChange options available for the ROLAND 700. Meaningful options that provide advantages precisely where most printing companies have problems with declining run lengths - the ratio of makeready time to production time. QuickChange options enable makeready time to be drastically reduced which results in a capacity increase of up to 30 percent in packaging printing and up to 20 percent in commercial printing.
QuickChange Job - job changeover enables production of the next job to begin sooner because the operating steps for job changeover can be pre-selected at the control console and carried out in an automated sequence without any further operator involvement. It is no longer necessary for the printer to activate the individual steps from the control console which saves time.
With QuickChange Job - automatic Transferter gripper adjustment all Transferters and the infeed drum are set to the new substrate thickness within a few seconds. This changeover on a six-color ROLAND 700 with double coating module earlier took around 20 minutes, and competitor presses with individual adjustment of the gripper systems needed up to 30 minutes! But now changing over from paper to board and vice versa is fast and easy.
QuickChangeColor features an innovation which is unique among sheetfed presses. Self-learning software takes into account the manual ink slide corrections for previously printed jobs. This ensures that ink presettings for subsequent jobs are more precise from the very beginning and also saves one inking regulation step and the attendant waste sheets.
Time-displaced inking roller contact at the separating points of the ink train separation system when restarting the press after a stop achieves stable and constant ink/water balance much faster. And this means much less ink density variation during the production run. The TripleFlow inking unit offers three alternatives for controlling the ink flow to match the subject: front-heavy for solids, normal flow and back-heavy flow for moisture-sensitive inks.
With QuickChange Wash, optimized software, a larger scraper blade and the lower position of the washing agent spray nozzles cleans the inking unit much faster. Apart from QuickChange Wash, other options are available that are especially important for printing with UV inks. Three separate supply circuits for water, conventional washing agent and UV washing agent save time-consuming washing agent changeover when switching from conventional inks to UV inks. And a fourth separate supply system is available for applying special washing agent concentrates which considerably reduces the time needed for changing from light to dark inks for example.
QuickChange Air controls almost every air consuming component in the entire press, either at the consumption point or directly from the control console. All relevant setting values can be stored for repeat jobs. The time-consuming trial and error method for finding the optimal settings is no longer necessary. This reduces makeready time and increases average printing speed.
QuickChange Clamp permits makeready time for the coating module to be drastically reduced. This option is especially interesting for printers who often need to change from flood coating to spot coating. The coating forms are either a blanket which is thick or a polymer plate which is thinner. Up till now these thickness differences made clamp adjustments very time-consuming. With QuickChange Clamp no adjustments are needed because each clamp bar has a separate clamping mechanism for rimmed blankets and coating plates. This makes changing from a blanket to a coating plate fast and easy, even for one operator. An additional pressing roller makes sure that the plate or blanket lays flat on the coating form cylinder.
QuickChange Infeed makes selection and setting of the frontlays to be used a very simple matter. Individual or group positioning of the nine frontlays can be done either from the control console or at an operating panel at the first printing unit. This option not only simplifies operation but also saves makeready time because the settings can be stored.
If you would like more information on QuickChange please contact us on 0845 331 3198 where our team will be delighted to help you further.
Everybody’s talking about innovations on sheetfed offset presses - higher speeds, larger formats, new automation modules. But what interests printers most of all?
Printers want to differentiate themselves from their competitors so that price is not the only factor in gaining orders. You can do this by offering your customers as many benefits as possible, Value Added Printing in other words. But of course you still want to have the most cost-efficient production and, since run lengths continue to decline, it seems obvious that the greatest potential for savings is to be found in reducing makeready times.
But in view of the great progress made in automation over the past ten years can makeready times be reduced any further? Yes they can, and very considerably indeed. This is proven by the QuickChange options available for the ROLAND 700. Meaningful options that provide advantages precisely where most printing companies have problems with declining run lengths - the ratio of makeready time to production time. QuickChange options enable makeready time to be drastically reduced which results in a capacity increase of up to 30 percent in packaging printing and up to 20 percent in commercial printing.
QuickChange Job - job changeover enables production of the next job to begin sooner because the operating steps for job changeover can be pre-selected at the control console and carried out in an automated sequence without any further operator involvement. It is no longer necessary for the printer to activate the individual steps from the control console which saves time.
With QuickChange Job - automatic Transferter gripper adjustment all Transferters and the infeed drum are set to the new substrate thickness within a few seconds. This changeover on a six-color ROLAND 700 with double coating module earlier took around 20 minutes, and competitor presses with individual adjustment of the gripper systems needed up to 30 minutes! But now changing over from paper to board and vice versa is fast and easy.
QuickChangeColor features an innovation which is unique among sheetfed presses. Self-learning software takes into account the manual ink slide corrections for previously printed jobs. This ensures that ink presettings for subsequent jobs are more precise from the very beginning and also saves one inking regulation step and the attendant waste sheets.
Time-displaced inking roller contact at the separating points of the ink train separation system when restarting the press after a stop achieves stable and constant ink/water balance much faster. And this means much less ink density variation during the production run. The TripleFlow inking unit offers three alternatives for controlling the ink flow to match the subject: front-heavy for solids, normal flow and back-heavy flow for moisture-sensitive inks.
With QuickChange Wash, optimized software, a larger scraper blade and the lower position of the washing agent spray nozzles cleans the inking unit much faster. Apart from QuickChange Wash, other options are available that are especially important for printing with UV inks. Three separate supply circuits for water, conventional washing agent and UV washing agent save time-consuming washing agent changeover when switching from conventional inks to UV inks. And a fourth separate supply system is available for applying special washing agent concentrates which considerably reduces the time needed for changing from light to dark inks for example.
QuickChange Air controls almost every air consuming component in the entire press, either at the consumption point or directly from the control console. All relevant setting values can be stored for repeat jobs. The time-consuming trial and error method for finding the optimal settings is no longer necessary. This reduces makeready time and increases average printing speed.
QuickChange Clamp permits makeready time for the coating module to be drastically reduced. This option is especially interesting for printers who often need to change from flood coating to spot coating. The coating forms are either a blanket which is thick or a polymer plate which is thinner. Up till now these thickness differences made clamp adjustments very time-consuming. With QuickChange Clamp no adjustments are needed because each clamp bar has a separate clamping mechanism for rimmed blankets and coating plates. This makes changing from a blanket to a coating plate fast and easy, even for one operator. An additional pressing roller makes sure that the plate or blanket lays flat on the coating form cylinder.
QuickChange Infeed makes selection and setting of the frontlays to be used a very simple matter. Individual or group positioning of the nine frontlays can be done either from the control console or at an operating panel at the first printing unit. This option not only simplifies operation but also saves makeready time because the settings can be stored.
If you would like more information on QuickChange please contact us on 0845 331 3198 where our team will be delighted to help you further.
