manroland introduces its new colour measurement technology for ROLAND 700 printing systems

New manroland InlineColorPilot measures ink density at full production speed without pulling sheets; saving time, improving colour stability, reducing waste and providing complete documentation of the production run

The time has come: with the ROLAND InlineColorPilot, manroland has introduced an inline colour measurement and control system for 3B-format presses. Dr. Schobesberger, Executive Vice President for Business Development at manroland AG in Offenbach, Germany, explains why this new inline development is so important: “The market demands that print production be as economical as possible, so the time and costs that are reduced by manroland’s InlineColorPilot are major factors in helping printers to achieve this efficiency. With the introduction of our InlineColorPilot into the 3B market, most of our 3B customers can now benefit from the extensive inline colour control experience we have gained over many years with large-format sheetfed presses and web offset presseses.”

The ROLAND InlineColorPilot, which is now available on theROLAND 700 HiPrint and can be retrofitted on the ROLAND 700 DirectDrive, saves printers time as they no longer have to pull sheets for measurement and control by offline systems. This new colour measurement and control system goes a step further than the proven ROLAND ColorPilot where the results are logged depending on measuring frequency. Higher print quality also means fewer waste sheets and thus more ecologically-efficient handling of expensive substrates as InlineColorPilot logs colour values inline throughout the production run helping to analyse and resolve problems in real time.

The ROLAND InlineColorPilot technology – producing quality faster

Reflecting manroland’s Value Added Printing philosophy, the ROLAND InlineColorPilot saves makeready time and ensures constantly high print quality. The time saved by inline measurement without pulling sheets enables more jobs to be printed each day ensuring production capacity can be utilised more effectively which boosts economic efficiency.

The ROLAND InlineColorPilot is installed above the impression cylinder of the last printing unit. The firmly installed transverse beam with no moving parts is a prerequisite for the extremely high measuring precision. Using coloured flash illumination it is possible to measure the complete print control strip within three sheets – regardless of the number of colours printed. The system can measure and regulate up to seven printing inks. Measurements are made densitometrically with a high-resolution black/white CCD sensor with polarising filter which is insensitive to the influence of reflections from wet ink and scattered light. The RGB flash illumination corresponds with the colour of the filters which are normally used for densitometric measurement.

The advantages of inline colour measurement at a glance are:

• Significant time savings in every makeready phase
• Faster regulation reduces the number of waste sheets
• Lower energy costs, fewer interruptions to production
• Fewer waste sheets since it is not necessary to stop the press for measuring and so the ink/water balance is maintained
• Continuous logging and documentation

Finally, with regard to return on investment, Dr. Schobesberger explains: “In the case of a ROLAND 700 DirectDrive with coating module and extended delivery, operated in two shifts with 2750 jobs per year; the ROLAND InlineColorPilot has an ROI period of less than two years. Its sturdy construction and the fact that it only needs cleaning after around 80 days have also really impressed customers.”