Automating Sheetfeds For the Sake of Productivity

For the past 10 years, sheetfed press manufacturers have focused on changing the design of a press by automating its moving parts. Wherever an operator manually touches the press, manufacturers have been seeking a way to automate the process. This automation has dovetailed with the fact that many printers are not finding highly qualified employees to operate their presses; thus, automation allows lesser-skilled employees to produce a high-quality job.

"Printers are never looking for less automation," says John Santie, sheetfed product sales manager for Mitsubishi Lithographic Presses. "The market is so competitive that printers have to squeeze productivity out of every source. Also, with shorter runs, printers need to have quicker changeovers from job to job. Automation helps to set up data for the next job, such as the sheet size and thickness. It allows for multitasking on the part of the press crew."

The question posed to printers is the extent to which press automation is enhancing the success of their companies, plus how much is affordable and how much of the automation features will actually be used. Every printer, of course, will have a different answer, as revealed in the following three examples, which involve use of a roll sheeter, automatic plate technology, and closed-loop spectrophotometry.

Note, of course, that every press manufacturer is very actively developing many new approaches and on-press automation features.

In 1998, when Ries Graphics, an 84-year-old general commercial shop in Butler, Wis., installed a 28"-wide Speedmaster 52 press from Heidelberg, the company's interest in further automation was set. "That press sparked our thought toward automation," says Dan Ries, plant manager. "It is a 'wrenchless' press that is console-controlled, and it has been providing us with time savings and higher quality as a direct result of its automation."

Early in 2000, Ries Graphics sold three of its older 40" straight four-, five-, and six-color presses and purchased two 40" MAN Roland 708 eight-color perfector presses.

"For us, automation starts with the Pecom software from MAN Roland and CIP3 technology," says Ries. "The control system tells our press operators what units will be needed, special notes about a job, whether or not the job perfects, and the size and thickness of the sheet. Then all our operator needs to do is pull up the job number, set up the feeder and double-sheet detectors, and review the special notes and unique aspects of the job."

Ries adds, "Having this ability on our presses has cut makeready time at least in half. What used to take an hour now only takes 20 to 30 minutes."

The two MAN Roland 708s are equipped with automatic plate loaders, automatic blanket washers, and in-line sheeting from a roll. "We can line up the plates in slots, which takes about one minute per plate," reports Ries. "But the big benefit has been the in-line sheeting. We can now custom-cut sheet lengths from 18" to 29" within centimeter intervals. This saves us waste and extensive inventory. Having these presses has doubled our net impressions per hour, plus we find that they run faster and smoother."

As for the future, Ries Graphics will be paying special attention to MAN Roland's new DicoWeb, which will be shown for the first time in North America at the Print 01 exposition in Chicago in September. "The DicoWeb concept is a possibility," says Ries.

Asked about further automation on a conventional sheetfed press, Ries adds, "I guess that exposing a plate mounted right on the press is the next step. We're hoping for it."

Automation has also made gains in smaller sheetfed shops. Metzgers Printing, a general commercial printer located in Holland, Ohio, near Toledo, has seen its business grow and noted significant gains in makeready and turnaround by installing an automated press last December.

The 25-year-old shop, which is owned by two brothers, had been using a 20" sheetfed press but felt it was ready to move up to the 28" (so-called half-size) press format.

"We believed that the half-size press model could produce more a lot more work, so we took a full year to carry out a thorough check of all the presses available and which ones had the best print quality and most automation," says Joe Metzger, president. "One of our main needs was a coater. We chose a 28" five-color Sakurai press equipped with a coater."

The company's clientele, located within a 60-mile radius of Toledo, includes large woodworking, furniture, automotive, and ad agency clients. Metzgers Printing is also a tier-one supplier to Relizon, a large Dayton, Ohio printer that needs brochures, product catalogs, sell sheets, and direct-mail pieces.

The new press's automation has been crucial to Metzgers' success. "The number-one automated feature is AutoPlate," says Joe Metzger. "In addition, we utilize a lot of extra features; for example, we have automatic wash-ups that have been extremely important. We can set the paper to different sizes, all from the console, and we installed the Scitex Brisque workflow, which talks to the press and exchanges data on each job. Finally, having a coater makes all of our jobs look better, plus we can print and finish them much faster."

In addition, the new Sakurai press has had an effect on some of the purchasing habits of the Metzgers, along with the company's production time.

"As a direct result of automation, we're ordering less paper and we've reduced our waste," says Joe Metzger. "In fact, we're completing makereadies in less than 15 minutes. At the same time, our quality levels have risen. On our old press, a 175-line screen was the norm, but now we can get in register more consistently and hold our dots at a norm of 200 lines, sometimes as high as 250 lines. We're winning jobs that we never used to get."

Established in 1976 by Joe and Tom Metzger as a typesetting shop, Metzgers survived the desktop publishing revolution and began to offer printing services six years ago. Today, the shop, staffed by 38 full-time employees and 14 part-timers, is set in a business subdivision on the outskirts of Toledo and 50 miles south of Detroit. The firm moved into a new 15,000-square-foot facility four years ago, not far from a mailing and fulfillment center of equal size.

"It's amazing," concludes Joe Metzger. "Other printers are slowing down but we can't keep enough paper in front of the press. Since the installation, our business has increased by 20%. We're planning to buy a second half-size press in the near future."

A third commercial printer seeking help from automation is Acme Printing Company Inc., headquartered in Des Moines, Iowa. Two months ago, Acme installed a new 41"-wide KBA Rapida 105 six-color sheetfed press with coater, loaded with fully automatic plate changers, CIP3 digital interface, automatic washers and ink roller wash, and a KBA Densitronic closed-loop spectrophotometry system.

It was the first KBA press to be purchased by Acme. Previously, the printer had utilized two 20" presses, a 25" six-color, a 29" six-color with coater, and a two-color and a four-color 40" press, none with much automation.

"Our new KBA Rapida has more automation than we used to have in our entire pressroom," says Jerry Miller, president of Acme Printing. "We needed a press with automation to improve our speed, productivity, and turnaround time. Run lengths are getting shorter and we're required to provide faster wash-ups to switch from job to job. Short of loading the feeder and unloading the delivery, everything on our Rapida 105 is automated."

Automation on the new press starts before printing when electronic files are sent from prepress to automatically set the ink fountains. "We never had a press where we could mount plates in register," says Miller. "The new Rapida is also equipped with a scanning densitometer to hold color on the job, also which we never had."

In catering to a Midwest clientele, Acme produces promotional pieces, catalogs, annual reports, and an array of other work. The firm was established in 1923 but when Jerry Miller purchased the company in 1976 it had just three employees. Acme Printing has since grown to employ 100 people and bill $14 million in annual sales.

Today, the company is located in two 30,000-square-foot buildings, one housing its office and production (including pressroom and full bindery), the other its warehouse and fulfillment. It has operated an automated Purup-Eskofot platesetter for the past two years.

"After running the new Rapida 105 for only a few weeks, we knew we were producing our jobs faster, both in running time and makeready," reports Miller. "In three to four months, we'll have better data on the press. Our goal is to increase our productivity by 50% compared to our old five-color press."

Manufacturers, in the meantime, continue to pore over their sheetfed equipment, seeking ways to automate every possible step and procedure. "There's not much left on a sheetfed press that isn't already automated," concludes John Santie of Mitsubishi. "If we could automate a way to scoop and wash the unused ink out of the fountains or automatically change a smashed blanket, then we'd see the ultimate in a fully automated sheetfed press."

For example, since most printers are now receiving digital files from customers, there's a chance to harness the power of an all-digital workflow, which means the integration of prepress, press, and postpress data but also the encompassing of business and management controls.

As Dowey notes, Heidelberg now offers a full slate of add-on features and systems under its overall Prinect network: business management (Prinance), digital asset management (Jetbase), imposition (Signastation), workflow (Prinergy), computer-to-plate (Topsetter and Trendsetter), prepress-to-press interface (PrepressInterface), press controls (CP 2000 Center), and closed-loop color quality control (ImageControl).

"PrepressInterface is a good example of how far automation has come," says Dowey. "This feature goes far beyond converting digital prepress data into ink key settings. The fact is, we can predict how much ink will be consumed on the job and, by building in networking support across a local area network, bypass "sneaker net" and allow press-to-press networking.

"Also, we connected PrepressInterface to our Autoregister system for quick performance and lower paper waste, and to our closed-loop color quality control system, ImageControl, to deliver a digital version of the proof, including all color reference data, across the network, achieving faster makeready and less waste."

Since "high-tech" sometimes may mean high complexity or high maintenance, manufacturers are pursuing improved reliability. For example, Dowey says, the blanket washers on Heidelberg's Speedmaster 102 and CD 102 sheetfeds can be equipped with WashStar, a system designed to keep the automatic device itself clean by "pressure washing" the cleaning system's brush and catch tray.

Furthermore, he adds, the wash-up devices are cassette-style units that can easily be removed for off-line, hands-on maintenance.

Dowey says that, because the machinery is running more hours per day and at higher speeds, it creates more heat and requires more antisetoff powder.

Heidelberg's two-system powdering solution, PowderStar Duo, applies powder to both sides of the sheet at once, allowing more even distribution while actually reducing total powder consumption.

A companion system, CleanStar, extracts excess powder from several key areas of the press delivery and runs it through a self-cleaning filter, keeping the press and the atmosphere cleaner.

Finally, to minimize heat and divert it from the press, manufacturers commonly put such peripherals as compressors, temperature control system, dampening circulation, and dryer into cabinets, which are fitted with vent hoods to extract the heat from the pressroom. While this approach is simple and inexpensive, it increases the amount of make-up air that must be added to the pressroom.

A better approach to controlling heat, says Dowey, is a circulation system using water, which is re-cooled outside the pressroom, then piped back in to remove more heat. This means no heat problems, no makeup air, less turbulence, and an overall better pressroom environment, he concludes.