Inspecting the market

Despite the integral role they play in the production of essential packaging and marketing collateral, converters within the print and packaging sector continue to face a variety of pressures brought on by testing economic conditions. While the market is arguably reaching some level of stability, in recent years the terms 'administration' and 'insolvency' were as common diction as 'profit' and 'turnover'.

Margins are increasingly squeezed, with some companies even producing work for cost price or, even worse, at a cost to them in order to retain the goodwill of the client in the hope they will return with more lucrative business in the future. Print buyers have seen
their spending power slashed and, predictably, many print and packaging converters with their hands tied, have been the ones to suffer.

Inspection investments
As a knock-on result of this, converters have been holding back on making major capital equipment investments such as printing presses, finishing machinery and major prepress systems. Delayed investments have, for the last few years, impacted manufacturers' sales figures, with converters opting to postpone such decisions until the market stabilises.

But one man's loss is another man's gain, and this aversion to six-figure spends has seen packaging businesses turn to other ways of improving their production operation. Workflow upgrades, staff training and small-scale finishing equipment investments are just a few. Another such market to have benefited is web inspection.

To potential customers investing in a web inspection system, the benefits are often three-fold. Reliable web inspection can ensure that converters achieve cost, energy and time savings throughout their production operation.

By ensuring faults and discrepancies in production are identified and classified early, such issues can be rectified and eliminated before a costly run of flawed prints are completed and require re-doing.

Technological benefits
There is a wealth of technology available across the fields of on-line automatic web inspection systems, including colour systems, video web inspection, visual web inspection and also on-line inspection applications.

Printers and converters have benefited from innovative and compact, but often also affordable, inspection technology that forms a key part of their quality control agendas.

One of the manufacturers of this technology is optical in-line inspection systems firm Isra Vision, which will showcase the latest developments across its PrintStar print inspection line during next month's K show in Düsseldorf, Germany.

Offering optical in-line print inspection of the printed product, the PrintStar system is claimed to guarantee "seamless monitoring" of the printed image directly at the machine. The technology can handle a range of print processes, substrates and printing methods such as offset, flexo, gravure and digital.

PrintStar is a scalable print inspection system and, importantly, can be integrated either in-line or off-line in the printing process while providing the monitoring and documentation of the print job in hand. The system's high speed line scan cameras ensure that the entire printed image is covered and documented, feeding back any flaws in production to the operator.

New to the PrintStar system and its range of ColorWatch colour monitoring features is the ability to control the lateral web movement in order to align slitting knives and, as a result, to maintain a clear and registered cut throughout the
production process.

Converter demands

Packaging converters, the end-users in the web inspection mix, are right to have exacting demands on their equipment suppliers. Technology can now scan the web and read each individual item as it is printed in real-time. This is carried out to check for any deviations from the approved print samples provided by the customer and, in addition, maintain an electronic image log of any incidents that may have been identified in production. The end goal of this is simple: to ensure the printed packaging is 100% free from defects.

Another aspect of the inspection market has been developed by Advanced Vision Technology (AVT), a leader in the field of print inspection and colour control, which has put two years' development into its new Hologram Inspection System. Set for launch at this month's Labelexpo event in Brussels, the system claimed to be the first 100% automatic system in the field that can inspect holographic foils and hologram print applications. Another USP of this machine is that it can inspect foils and holograms without requiring additional optic heads installed on the printing press involved in production.

While AVT is pushing the boundaries in the field of vision, process control equipment group Erhardt+Leimer has recently unveiled its latest developments in web guiding. The company's Elcam Pattern Guiding System has been designed for packaging converters that need to control the position of packaging labels throughout the slitting process.

As Erhardt+Leimer points out, in many situations it is essential for label converters to print the image and text in relation to the position of the slit on the substrate to guarantee the label can be applied accurately at a later date. The Elcam system can also control the position of the printed image and be integrated into the manufacturer's digital web guiding systems.

As the busy latter part of the trade show season approaches, there will be a wealth of innovative technological developments exhibited at events such as the K show, Labelexpo and Packaging Innovations. 2013 has shaped up to be an exciting year for converters interested in web inspection and other advancements in the inspection arena. The panel on the left offers a snapshot of some of the latest innovations from other manufacturers.

Inspection highlights
Crest Solutions: The latest version of the company's label inspection product, PrintInspector 3.0, has been designed to inspect pre-defined areas of thermal transfer printed labels. The on-line verification system is built to pick up on faults in the production of barcodes and graphics.

Rotocontrol: The new RSP 440H is a pharmaceutical inspection machine featuring an unwind stand for rolls up to 1.2m in diameter, a high speed dynamic buffer, a fully automated knife positioning system, and a secure multi-lane counting system.

Eltromat: The company has updated its twin_check print inspection and digital web monitoring system. Primarily for applications in the flexible packaging printing process, the twin_check is claimed to cut substrate waste by rectifying recognised errors immediately.