The Italian way

Italy is one of the world’s leading suppliers of printing and converting machinery, known especially for its flexo and gravure presses, laminators, and slitting and rewinding equipment. The quality and style of the machines it builds has helped the Italian industry keep the economic crisis at bay.

Earlier this year, Ugo Barzanò, out-going president of Acimga, reported positive results for 2008, in spite of the world economic crisis, with an 8.7% increase in sales of printing and converting machinery. As usual, exports spearhead the industry’s overall growth, with an 8% increase accounting for a record 80% in the total turnover.

Typical of the companies behind the export success is slitter rewinder manufacturer Bimec, which is expanding its organisation with a new 3,500m² building for production and R&D facilities.

Bimec’s range includes duplex models for mother roll widths from 1,000-1,800mm and rewind diameters up to 800mm, slitting from 25mm to the maximum machine web width. The company also offers duplex turret slitters with automatic change for the same roll sizes, a narrow web duplex model to slit and rewind down to 10mm, and centre driven rewinds with motorised arms to unwind mother rolls up to 3,200mm wide and rewind finished roll diameters up to 1,000mm.

Another Italian specialist slitting company is Mario Cotta, a leading knife blade and knifeholder manufacturer producing 150,000 blades and more than 60 slitting systems every year. The company claims to have knife blade variants to cover every slitting need - complemented by a range of knifeholders suitable for virtually any slitting installation.

The new SL50 electronic slitting system will be launched next month. It has a 50mm minimum slit width and other versions in development include the SL18 with a 18mm slit width and a high speed 100mm version for the paper industry.

Lee Fenney, formerly of UK company Sigmala and now managing Mario Cotta’s electronic product development, explains: “Our fully automated systems have big advantages in terms of accuracy, speed and safety. We’ve incorporated machine diagnostics systems, too, so you won’t have to worry about breakdowns any more. It’s new technology to this industry and we have patented it world-wide.”

Printing and laminating

Earlier this year, Rotomec presentated its new SL 850 solventless laminator (pictured) in an Open House demonstration in the company’s Technology Center in San Giorgio Monferrato. Based on the CL 850 multi-technology laminator, the SL 850 is said to offer the optimal configuration for a solventless line. Its layout, control systems and component sections have all been designed ‘according to the most efficient and ergonomic criteria, to accelerate and facilitate machine operation, enabling fast job makeready and change-overs’.

The very short distance between the coating unit and the laminating nip are said to provide the most accurate process control and web introduction, whilst the very sensitive and accurate web handling control system enables production of high quality laminates with very low waste of material in the process.

The SL 850 has a 1,350mm web width and is equipped with automatic duplex shafted winders. Production speed is 430m/min, but during the demonstrations – lamination of two 20 micron BOPP clear films – it achieved 750m/min to demonstrate the behaviour of the adhesive and the lamination process at high speed.

Rotomec also presented its latest advance aimed at reducing waste in gravure printing during the open house, with a 9-colour RS 4004X press equipped with the TAPS feature for automatic cylinder pre-register setting.

The TAPS (Total-Automatic-Pre-register-Setting) system is claimed to be easy to use and to reduce waste to unprecedented levels at press makeready and change-overs.

According to Rotomec: “TAPS guarantees the repeatability of the minimum start-up waste because it is the first register presetting based only on what is printed on the web, totally independent of operator skill, web path configuration, parameters adjustment”.

Nuova Gidue, the new incarnation of the former Gidue, is entering the security printing market with the introduction of a high speed 4-colour intaglio press - the I-4 – promising it will ‘open a total new field of unexplored and exclusive opportunities for the label and packaging industry’. The company also has a new Full Combat flexo press with integrated PC remote control, the patented Intelligent Register system and a new inking system for high speed performance (up to 200m/min) with UV inks.