Seen in a flash

Production manager Güneri Tasçioglu knew in a flash that he had found the right inspection system for package printing at Pilenpak Ambalaj. When he saw a Unilux Lith-O-Light (LOL) 20 stroboscopic inspection light in action, he knew he had found a system that would enable his press and rewinder operators to see defects at full production speed and make the necessary adjustments to maintain high yields and customer satisfaction.

Manisa based Pilenpak, which has a 20 per cent share of the Turkish market, prints on BOPP, PET and paper to produce flexible packaging materials and roll-fed labels for food products. It supplies customers on four continents, and quality is paramount. The company is TS-ISO-EN 9000 and BRC-IOP certified and has passed numerous audits for food safety.

“As with all growing industries, customer expectations are increasing and there were questions about tiny unconformities, such as small splashes of ink or some little spots,” Güneri Tasçioglu says. Then he received a phone call from Deniz Deral, sales manager for Borden Engineering, Unilux’s representative in Turkey.

“We wanted to talk to Pilenpak because it’s one of the biggest companies in Turkey,” he says. “They had been using another strobe light with a camera, so they understood the benefit of a good strobe light. When they saw the Unilux light, they liked it right away. Once they gave us their specifications, we easily selected the suitable lights.”

Güneri Tasçioglu recalls: “When I showed one of our customers an image we had taken with a Unilux light on a slitting machine that was moving at 600 m/min, he was convinced of our focus on quality and the continued improvement of our product.”

Pilenpak has installed Unilux LOL-40 lights on its four Japanese gravure presses – two 8-colour machines, a 9-colour and a 12-colour with 60 cm widths - and four slitters, plus a LOL-20 on a doctoring machine. The LOL-40s are able to illuminate an area 125 cm wide by 30 cm long from a distance of 30-45 cm, and the LOL-20 can illuminate a 65 cm wide area from 30-45 cm.

A Unilux HD-851SE with an SILC controller has been installed on another slitter to take advantage of its brighter light, because it is mounted 1.4m from the machine.

Güneri Tasçioglu says the lights have helped press operators spot defects such as streaks, spots, bad registration and other defects that can cause a customer to reject a shipment of packaging or labels.

“We have reduced our waste on our film output to 0.5 per cent by reducing the amount of defective material going through our laminating and slitting processes,” he reveals.

“As we see unconformities in the print runs, we can put flags on the bad sections and cut them out before going to the value dded lamination process. Before adding the Unilux inspection lights, we did not realize the problems until after lamination, or even after slitting.”

Pilenpak has integrated the lights with web inspection devices on some of its presses. While the inspection devices do not see the entire web all the time, the Unilux lights can cover its full width, and when the inspection devices indicate a problem, press operators use them to get a better look.

In addition to helping the operators find defects, the lights also help them manage the process better by enabling them to see problems at a glance, and use their knowledge of the product and process to determine the possible cause of the defect.

“On the slitting machines we use Unilux as a final quality control. It is much more cost effective to find a problem in the final product than to have a customer find it,” he affirms.

Pilenpak is now considering the purchase of a similar number of lights, presses, slitters, laminators, doctoring machines and inspection systems for a new plant that will mirror the existing operation. The new plant is scheduled to open by early 2009.

Güneri Tasçioglu concludes: “We always believed our quality and service were first rate; our customers always believed that, too. That’s how we have been able to maintain our targeted market share. But when we saw the details that Unilux enabled us to see, we knew instantly we could take our customer satisfaction to a higher level.”