Seeing is believing

Over 2,000 visitors from 57 countries headed for Lausanne in Switzerland during a week in September, when Bobst welcomed customers and journalists to its Competence 10 Open House event to witness the many new machines that have been developed over the past years.

Asitrade, Fischer & Krecke and Martin, all members of the Bobst Group, took part, along with 20 partner suppliers.

One of the stars of the show was the Masterflex-HD (High Definition), flexo press, which made its world premier at the event.

The quality of print demonstrated on microflute corrugated board was truly exceptional, and certainly very close, if not equal to offset. Featuring three innovative technologies, the iQ 300 for inline quality control, ‘Start and Go’ for waste reduction on start-up, and Proactive Register giving precise colour registration, the Masterflex-HD is setting new standards in terms of print design possibilities, cost and waste reduction, all helping achieve ‘zero fault packaging’.

Masterflex-HD’s ‘Start & Go’ system makes it possible to automatically obtain colour registration on the whole surface of the sheet and be ready to run in just six minutes, instead of the normal 18, while also reducing waste.

Accuracy is ensured by the Proactive Register. Each sheet is re-registered between printing units, so variations between colours no longer accumulate and the number of colours no longer has an influence on accuracy. Therefore superimposing colours to obtain texts or overlapping reduction is no longer an issue.

The iQ 300 Quality Control system analyses the quality of the whole surface of each sheet, and rejects any that are defective. In addition to any print failure, defects such as scuff marks, oil spots, or damages on the liner, will also be detected.

The loader presented at Competence 10 was optimised for fine flutes and those with delicate liners. Coupled with the roller-free DDF sheet introduction of the Masterflex-HD, the structural, protective and aesthetic characteristics of the carton remain unchanged.

Alongside this, there was another ‘world premiere’ with the Expertcut 1.6 flat-bed diecutting press, a mid-range machine with Power Register for precise positioning of each sheet before it is fed in. Speeds of 6,000 sheets/hour are the running production speed.

Hotfoil stamping

Marco Lideo, Product Manager, Hot Foil Stampers, at Bobst, enthusiastically demonstrated the latest development in hotfoil stamping, the Masterfoil 106 PR. He told visitors: “Forget everything that you knew so far about hotfoil stamping presses and start from scratch, because this machine completely redefines the whole process of applying foil to a printed sheet.”

According to Mr Lideo, the company has been listening very carefully to what customers want, and has developed this machine to meet those demands.

At the heart of the machine is the Foil Touch System, a completely redesigned platen section of the machine, which results in 50% longer contact between stamping dies, foil and sheet. This means that less pressure and lower temperatures are required to achieve high quality foiling results. The Masterfoil can foil and emboss in one pass at speeds of up to 8,000 sheets/hour. At the Open House, a large surface foil application with embossing of 2.5mm depth was demonstrated at 4,000 sheets/hour and 80% of the available stamping force, and the results were more than impressive. The job demonstrated was impossible to run before this machine was launched.

Another new feature is the Smart Feeder, which is an intelligent system providing smooth sheet feeding from the top of the pile over the feed table up to the Power Register II and into the platen. The ‘intelligent’ part is that if the foil does not correctly arrive at the Power Register II – the foil-to-print register system will make the necessary adjustments.

The Masterfoil 106 PR is also setting new standards in terms of ergonomics, offering 360 degree accessibility. There is a platform all around the machine, large access windows, up to 5 CUBE control units at all important intervention points, as well as its new Easy Foil device which makes foil web introduction child’s play and reduces foil setting times by up to 40% complete the benefits offered.

Folding and gluing

After over a year of discussions with a number of prominent corrugated box manufacturers around the world, Bobst has taken on board the needs of customers in its development of the Expertfold and Logipack, said to be a cost effective solution for substrates from heavy solid board to double wall, and for high value-added products flexo printed onto microflute.

With lower energy requirements than its predecessors, Expertfold is a ‘greener’ machine and is available in four widths and three configurations. At Competence 10, it was shown in line with the new Logipack automatic packer which, despite its light touch, delivers a heavyweight performance when handling products from microflute to brown box. This robotised system counts, collects, batches, straps, and palletises packages on the delivery side of the foldergluer. Equipped with a standard strapping module, the unit can handle10 single-strapped bundles/min.

Laminating

Another new machine shown at the event was the Asitrade Masterflute, a new generation of inline litho laminating equipment. This machine was developed to meet the demands of laminators, and has made it possible to laminate lightweight pre-printed sheets onto single faced corrugated.

Due to a general packaging cost reduction, the need for lower base weights of the offset printed sheets is an ongoing market trend. More and more board mills have light base weight capabilities now, according to Bobst.

A printing format of 2,050mm x 1,350mm has been available on the market for several years, but laminating this sheet size was only possible on manual sheet to sheet machines. The Masterflute incorporates a new sheet feeder that includes a high speed suction head, allowing base weights from 140 to 400g/m² to be used. The new bridge design brings the sheets quickly and accurately to the Power Aligner sheet alignment system.

The Power Aligner uses Registron sensors to determine the sheet edge positions. The software calculates the accelerations needed for skew and lateral position correction, resulting in a constant overlap. The technological developments built into the aligner are said to eliminate the risk of sheet damage, and sensitive paper qualities as well as sensitive printing jobs can be laminated at full speed.

Competence Centre

Alongside the world premier machines, a huge range of diecutters, foil stampers and folder-gluers were on display in the Bobst Competence Centre. Here, new developments for the embossing of Braille using double Accubraille units, and a new Braille-Scan system for checking that the Braille is accurate were shown running.

Other developments include window patching, which can now be carried out for the first time inline on Bobst and other folder gluers, on a unit called Accuwin, thanks to a collaboration with window patching producer Heiber + Schröder. Up to 40,000 boxes/hour can be handled, and film rolls can be changed on the fly.

It is clear that Bobst, despite a 40% decrease in turnover in 2009 due to the recession, has continued to invest in R & D, the results of which were evident at the Competence 10 event. The event was summed up by CEO Jean-Pascal Bobst: “We continue to invest in research, development and innovation in order to preserve our technological leadership. This is why we are proud to present, under the theme ‘towards zero fault packaging’ innovative products and services.”

An example of the high quality print that

can be achieved by the Masterflex-HD on

corrugated board.

November 2010 converting Today | www.convertingtoday.co.uk 23

Producing exceptional quality hotfoil stamping is possible with the new Masterfoil. Masterfoil Visitors to the Competence 10 event examine the new Masterflex-HD flexo press, which prints in high definition on microflute corrugated board. Competence 10 Bobst’s Competence 10 event gave customers a chance to witness the Masterfoil hot stamping machine in action. Stamping machine An example of the high quality print that can be achieved by the Masterflex-HD on corrugated board. Example

External weblinks
Converting Today is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.

Bobst