KBA displays sheet-fed offset printing technology

Print specialists from companies around the Czech Republic have visited KBA's plant in Radebeul, Germany, to gather information on the latest developments in sheet-fed offset printing technology.

The visitors included representatives of KBA press, such as Model Obaly from Opava and Vychodoceska Tiskarna from Pardubice, as well as Performa users such as Tiskarna K and B from Most, as well as potential customers.

Jens Baumann, KBA Radebeul's product manager, outlined automation concepts geared to reducing make-ready times on sheet-fed offset presses.

By way of cost-benefit analyses, he demonstrated how automation modules such as KBA's Drivetronic SPC - assuming a corresponding job structure - could pay back the initial higher investment and raise a print company's profitability by enabling more jobs to be handled in a given time.

The company claimed that Drivetronic Plate-Ident serves three purposes: plate detection to maximise the process reliability of plate changing; the pre-registration of the plates on the basis of additionally exposed register marks; and a plausibility check to ensure the correct assignment of plates to jobs and printing units.

Such functions, along with Cleantronic and its associated components, are said to be the key to time and waste savings.

Electronic suction ring positioning on perfector presses, the Ergotronic ACR video register tool and a range of Qualitronic modules for inline colour control are some of the other automation systems on offer.

Visitors watched a series of three job changeovers on an eight-colour Rapida 106 perfector.

Baumann and Wolfram Zehnle, head of the KBA customer centre, discussed the various automation modules on the running press and showed how Drivetronic SPC, Qualitronic Professional and Cleantronic interact to reduce make-ready in practice.

Jorg Henkel, KBA sales engineer, explained sense branding and print.

He said that, as has long been the case in the automobile industry, among airlines and in other branches of industry, increasing attention is being paid to sensory perceptions in the consumer and luxury-goods sector.

Advertising materials and packaging are already lent the characteristics and scents, appearance or feel of a particular brand name at the time of their production.

KBA claims that its finishing concepts permit various 'perceptions' to be brought to paper.

Henkel compared the positives and negatives of different coating variants and described some of the surface effects that can be achieved.

There was also a practical demonstration on a six-colour Rapida 106 with an inline coater.

The product was first finished with a UV gloss coating.

Then, the previously unused fifth printing unit was engaged to apply an oil-based varnish, creating register-true matt-gloss effects (hybrid technology).

As a third step, an additional UV-effect varnish was used to give the product a textured surface.

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