Warming Trend for 40" Presses?

While the slow economy continues to hamper sales of new 40"-wide sheetfed presses, manufacturers—who recently began reporting an uptick in printers' requests for quotes—are busy laying the groundwork for a comeback in investments.

Three press builders are introducing brand-new looks and options while others are adding new standard features that reduce makeready and promote automation and throughput.

"At this point, printers are investing for different reasons than they did a few years ago," reports John Dowey, vice president of sheetfed sales for Heidelberg USA. "Back then, most buyers were adding capacity but now they're looking at 'optimizing' capacity, which means replacing older and less efficient models with faster, better, more automated machines. In other words, they don't necessarily want to boost total sheet capacity, but they do want to increase their output per press, per employee, or per operating hour."

One side effect of this trend, adds Dowey, is that Heidelberg, which takes in a "fair" number of trade-in presses, has been doing a brisk business remarketing older equipment to buyers needing capacity but unable to buy new.

At Komori America, sheetfed press product manager Doug Schardt says, "Yes, we're starting to see an increase in sales activity, but the economy is still fragile and we're not yet ready to say we're out of the recession."

MAN Roland's director of marketing, Christian Cerfontaine, reports, "We feel very strongly that confidence is back and that we could begin booking some very nice projects. With the U.S. economy starting to recover, printers will want to be ready for the next boom."

KBA North America also is very optimistic about sales. "The growing acceptance and market share of our 40" Rapida presses in the commercial printing market has enabled us to maintain remarkably steady sales following the events of 9/11," says Robert Y. McKinney, director of marketing. "Just since February, we've seen a definite upturn in sales and activity on both 40" and larger-format presses, as well as half-size."

Despite market tightness, a select group of high-end commercial printers is buying "long" presses that lay down multiple colors on just one side of the sheet (others are buying long perfectors, to be covered in GAM in the July issue). One of these is Primary Color, a 200-employee operation with two Los Angeles area locations (Culver City and Irvine), which last month installed a 40" Speedmaster CD 102 eight-color nonperfecting press with coater.

"We put in the Heidelberg eight-color both to add capacity and expand our print base among the ad agencies and large corporations we serve in Los Angeles and Orange County," explains Dan Hirt, president. "As designers come up with jobs requiring more and more colors, printers have had to buy eight- and 10-color presses to stay competitive. We found we were limited with our existing six-color. The new press gives us a better quality advantage and allows us to be more consistent throughout the run."

While the six-year-old six-color is not without automation, says Hirt, the new eight-color is equipped with automatic plate changers and additional features, including the Technotrans Ink.line automatic ink supply system and CombiStar unit for ink temperature control and dampening circulation, plus Heidelberg's DryStar infrared and hot-air drying systems.

Moreover, Hirt adds, the new press is equipped with ImageControl, a system that scans the sheet in small patches of 160,000 pixels in just 23 seconds, then calculates any printed deviation from either a digital OK or customer's OK'd sheet, allowing the press to stay within the boundaries of the press sheet signed off by the client.

Primary Color, founded in 1985 as a prepress shop, saw its work dwindle in the mid-'90s as printers installed their own prepress departments. Recalls Hirt, "We felt we needed to diversify and compete for the whole production package."

Next month, Komori America plans to unveil a brand-new platform for its 40" Lithrone model, henceforth to be called the LS 40. The press, which was demonstrated at the Ipex 2002 show in April, will be on display at the Graph Expo and Converting Expo show in October in Chicago.

"This new platform is derived from the changing needs of the market," notes Schardt. "While there's no new console, the LS 40 is substantially different, with customer-driven features: it runs faster, offers much faster makeready, prints on a wider range of stocks, and is operator friendly. There are enhanced features in the console and the press units, and the automation for plate changing, ink rollers, and blanket washing has all been reworked."

Schardt, who points out that "even the appearance of the press is different," says that the design allows Komori to more easily take advantage of technological updates. He adds, "This platform opens up a lot of opportunities for us and our customers."

For now, the new platform is available only on a straight, nonperfecting 40" press; a perfector model is planned for early 2003. While the LS 40 has been undergoing field-testing for a year in Japan, says the company, no models are in operation at present in the U.S.

MAN Roland has redesigned the look and feel of all of its presses, including the Roland 700, its 40" standard. "This is more than a change in color scheme," says Cerfontaine. "All our models now have a new design adapted from our future-oriented DicoWeb press, but we feel their beauty is more than skin deep."

The Roland 700's rated speed has been boosted to 16,000 sheets per hour (sph), plus fully automatic, cassette-free APL plate loading is now standard. Also, an in-line sorter located ahead of the delivery, which was introduced at Ipex, ejects bad sheets; the sort function can be combined with manual, half-automatic, or full-automatic pile change in the delivery, to permit nonstop operation without concern that waste sheets will get into the delivery pile.

For enhanced quality control, the Roland 700 can now be equipped with a new ColorPilot console, which adds spectrophotometric measurements to the standard densitometric readings of the MAN Roland CCI (computer controlled inking) feature.

Also, a new in-line perforating and punching system, which can be installed on the last unit of any Roland 700, provides printers with additional single-pass power, and a Roland 700 off-line coating press launched at Ipex is available with single- or double-coating units.

At Ipex, Heidelberg demonstrated its Prinect press networking system. It also launched AxisControl, called an affordable spectrophotometric system—designed for use on an individual press and integrated with the press's standard CP 2000 console—that reads color bars and provides closed-loop control. Heidelberg's ImageControl system, which carries out in-image color measurement, can be used on up to four Speedmasters.

Another innovation launched by Heidelberg at Ipex is DataControl version 5.0, which reportedly opens the way to computer-integrated manufacturing by allowing real-time, two-way communication between the connected presses and finishing equipment. DataControl facilitates the use of data from Heidelberg's Prinance system to be used for presetting, allowing the Speedmaster press to virtually set itself up for the next job, without the repetitive input of job information.

DataControl options, which include a scheduling module and complete reporting on press operations, integrates with Prinance, Heidelberg's estimating, billing, and order management software, allowing actual production values to be compared to the quote in real time. Other Prinect components, such as PrepressInterface, also tie in, to provide the required information to the system.

With the introduction of its new Diamond product line, Mitsubishi Lithographic Presses has increased the speed of its 40" sheetfed model to 16,000 sph.

The manufacturer has also redesigned the ink fountain with a new tray that allows the operator to easily switch trays and reduce makeready time. In addition, Mitsubishi is ordering all of its 40" presses with plate changers to reduce operator fatigue.

While eight-page presses continue to be the mainstay of the sheetfed market, small-format machines are gaining some ground with increases in speeds, automation, and versatility.

"Today several of our long-time 40" customers are buying 29"- or even 20"-wide presses after looking closely at their work mix," concedes Heidelberg's Dowey. "During the recent boom years, it was easy for them to just add another 40" machine, but now they're realizing that a good portion of their work might run more economically and efficiently on a smaller press."

But this is a sensible solution, Dowey says, because freeing up 40" equipment to do what it does best is really "right-sizing" print production.

He notes that Heidelberg offers three machines in the four-up, 29" format, including the two- or four-unit Printmaster 74, an affordable model, and the fully automated Speedmaster 74, available in up to 10 colors, with or without perfecting.

The company's latest model, the nonperfecting 23 5/8 x 29 1/8" CD 74 (Heidelberg calls this the "three-quarter" format), can accommodate a range of substrates, from onionskin up to 32-pt. board. Already, more than 200 printing units have been sold in North America, characterized, says Dowey, by smooth, quick start ups.

Another alternative is use of a six-page sheetfed. At MAN Roland, which offers its 23 1/4 x 29 1/8" Roland 300, Christian Cerfontaine points out, "Which format to use depends on the specific job at hand; for instance, the six-page format is quite versatile and productive. Still, compared to an eight-up press, the six-page does have some limitations on the finishing side, and folding can be a challenge. Also, printers producing brochures with 16 pages or more are usually better off with a 41" size because the sheet requires less work in the bindery."

In basically the same format is the Roland 500, which is designed for straight multicolor production of packaging or commercial work at up to 18,000 sph, accommodating substrates as thick as one millimeter.

Concludes Cerfontaine, "The 40" models offer a lot of in-line varnishing combinations, with multiple coating and drying units that are not available on the smaller sheet sizes."