New Day for Webs

After a few dormant years, printers are again ordering web presses—in sizes ranging from the common 16-page, 38´´ width, up to giants in widths of more than 80´´ accommodating eight or more pages across. The mandates for this recent bump of installations are market pressures for fast delivery, and price competitiveness.

Web printers are also benefiting mightily from the transition to digital prepress and computer-to-plate technology. Semi-automatic and automatic plate changing systems significantly reduce makeready times. Komori boasts an under-seven-minute changeover for its 60,000-cph single-diameter System 38S, with Full-APC autoplate that changes eight plates in under two minutes. Such automated capabilities on today’s webs increase available run time dramatically.

The latest press controls use data from prepress to preset and monitor operation of the latest generation of webs—often including the folder and reel—while sophisticated 'ramp-up’ and closed-loop color systems deliver the ability to achieve salable color in fewer copies. The impact of digital prepress can also be found in sophisticated compensation calculations for fan-out, wherein the web swells as it picks up moisture through successive units. By expanding the plate imaging to correspond, register can be maintained.

Even more so than sheetfed businesses, web operations face a high cost of investment to achieve increases in productivity. An additional challenge for some local and regional web firms is the risk of acquiring more press capacity than they can profitably fill.

Sprint Press purchased a new 16-page press to improve its competitive position in the regional market surrounding its home base in Fort Worth, TX. But the company must also set about reaching beyond local markets to fill up the schedule on its new KBA Compacta.

With $40 million in annual sales, the company produces catalogs, brochures and sports programs for the Texas Rangers baseball and Stars hockey teams and NASCAR programs for the Texas Motor Speedway.

“In running this business, I have found that every six to seven years I have to bet the farm,” says Bob Williams, CEO. “As soon as equipment is paid for you can coast for a while, but if you don’t reinvest in newer, more productive iron, you are going to be out of business. And you have to make the right equipment decisions.”

Sprint recently purchased a new 16-page, dual-web, 39½" wide KBA Compacta 215. Williams acknowledges he “bet the farm” on the new press. It will supplement an existing single-web M-200 press. The reason for the purchase? In a word: productivity.

“We were running the older press for three eight-hour shifts, but it was getting less and less competitive,” says Williams. “We calculated that if we wanted to print 50,000 copies of a 32-page job, it would tie up the press for eight hours. With the new double-web Compacta 215 coming on line—which can print 32 pages instead of only 16—we can do makeready in one hour and then run at 50,000 per hour. A job that took eight hours on the old press can now be done in two hours.”

Williams attributes a “tremendous increase in productivity” to the new press’s ability to accept prepress data to control color, as well as from higher run speeds, automatic register and color control, and semi-automatic plate loading. Assuming the press is webbed up with no change in paper stock, the entire 8-unit press is ready to run for register and color in 18 minutes.

“The quicker you can mount plates, come to register and come to color, the faster you can put salable product on the floor—that’s a big deal,” says Williams.

“We wanted the versatility eight units in line would give us,” says Williams. “You can do full color process and put down a metallic ink, or PMS color. For a critical customer, I can run one web through eight units, running the top four pages on four units and the bottom four pages on the other four units and adjust the color on the top pages independently of the bottom pages.”

The greater output made manual bundling impossible. So Sprint Press also invested in a new Muller Martini Vivo automated horizontal bundling system, one of the first in the U.S. The new system does not require a full-time operator at the bundler.

As the new press came on line, Sprint began running each press just one shift, reducing its labor cost by an entire press crew.

“That’s the kind of productivity you get with the new equipment, but it does not come cheap,” says Williams.

One indicator of the rebounding full web press market is Komori’s re-entry into it. Fielding an expanded and combined sheetfed and web sales and service organization, Komori says it will be able to service both the markets—markets that the company sees as coming closer together as more medium to large printers operate both types of equipment.

Komori is spearheading its renewed full web press sales efforts with the 60,000 iph, 38´´ System 38S. Introduced to the international market in 2000, the press is a high-end, 16-page machine designed for ultra-short makereadies. It includes an autoplate system and full presetting through the folder as standard equipment and is fully JDF compliant. The inking and dampening systems are similar to those on Komori’s LS sheetfed product line.

Introduction to the North American market came with two new cut-offs: 239/16´´ and 22¾´´ that happen (not coincidentally) to suit both North American and export-minded Chinese printers. Three available folders for the System 38S include: single chopper combination; a side-by-side chopper combination; and a double chopper combination.

Sales for the new Komori full web to date include Fry Communications for an 8-unit, two-web machine (due in 2007); Canadian sheetfed plant Prodigy Graphics, Brampton, ON; and PBM Graphics, Research Triangle, NC, which is operating a 6-unit, single-web press.

The new Komori System 38S, PBM’s third web, is also its first full size one. In a move to cut costs and grow efficiency, the press has been installed in a new plant that consolidates PBM’s two former operations into a single building.

Although PBM considered its half-web presses an easy transition from sheetfed, it realized that full-webs are an entirely different market.

“We are at the point where we are going after that web market,” says Dave Richey, VP sales and marketing for PBM. “It is primarily longer run work that had been running sheetfed in the 11´´ full bleed market. It required six units top and bottom for a full cutoff 23´´ bleed in sheeted work. We went to the 38 web because we run a lot of product up to 37´´ bleed. So we went to the long cutoff 239/16´´ in the 38´´ press width.”

The press includes a Komori combination folder with double parallel delta folding capabilities and a four- and eight-page module. Included in the press arrangement are a Megtec Match Speed Splicer, a 40´ Megtec dryer, QuadTech Color Control and Register Guidance Systems.

“One of the reasons we decided on the press was print quality,” says Richey. PBM uses the new press in its high-end annual report and catalog product match work for furniture, technology and pharmaceutical companies where exact color reproduction is very important.

Preparations for the full web were extensive, and included purchase of a full Muller Martini post-press line that included trimmers, a Vivo stacker with palletizing, new roll-handling equipment, a PUR perfect binder and new MBO folders.

“We looked at other full web manufacturers, but for us the Komori with its quick makeready and auto-plate helped us make our final decision,” says Ralph Black, manager, corporate web press department for PBM. He likes the KHS AI presetting and makeready system, which learns from job to job, optimizing color with the ink fountain controls.

“After running it for about four weeks, we have seen the benefits and fully expect this press to cut our makeready by 50 to 70%,” says Black.

Komori assembled and tested the press at its Sekiyado, Japan, facility, running multiple forms and all folds before shipping it to PBM. PBM says the installation went very well, with no huge surprises.

Cenveo’s Anderson Lithograph wanted a more user-friendly and efficient, state-of-the-art press with higher run speed that could fit in a bay previously occupied by a 1987-vintage MAN Roland Rotoman C. The company, which prints high-end catalogs, automotive brochures, annual reports and magazine inserts, had specific requirements for a new full-web commercial press for its Commerce, CA, plant.

“If you compare an older press running with 85% utilization to a new press that has all the bells and whistles and closed-loop color, running 35 to 50% faster—as well as making ready in half the time—you can have the new one paid back in two to three years,” says Ed Binder, VP and director of operations for Anderson Litho.

“Going wider than the 38´´ web width or to a double web press was not practical for our business segment and our market,” says Binder. “Our typical basis weights are 80- to 100-lb. coated book stock, not something on which a double web press is going to work as well for us as this one.”

Anderson looked at printed tests on competing presses, including some with sleeve-type blanket cylinders, but felt the Mitsubishi Diamond 16 MAX-M performed better.

The press produces 16-page signatures at up to 1,800 fpm. Standard features are shaftless drives, high-speed, semi-automatic plate changers, (fully automatic plate changers to be available later this year), fully automatic folder changeover and MAX-Saver waste-reduction software. “We saw the performance of the Diamond 16 MAX-M as superior in terms of dot gain, sharpness, how smooth the press printed in both solids and screens with minimal streaks in solid or 50% screen areas,” says Binder. “The overall print quality was much better. The reduced level of streaks with the mini-gap design is comparable to that of sleeve blanket presses.

“We put every control we could on this press: ribbon control, cutoff control, register control and closed-loop color to be able to have the confidence that we could get up and run,” he says. “Also critical for us is the ability to run at high rates of speed on 80- or 100-lb. coated.”

Installation of the Mitsubishi press began at the end of November. Anderson Lithograph’s 150-foot-long press (shown above) is a 6-unit, single-web in 22¾×38´´ format. To deliver the requisite folding capabilities within the existing bay, the press is engineered with a double-wide pinless combination folder and a single tower pinless former folder.

With this arrangement, Anderson can run a multitude of specific products including open three-sided, 8-page signatures, and 16 and 32 double delivery products. After having the press pre-assembled, programmed and test run in Japan before shipment, the installation went smoothly. “It was basically plug and play at that point,” says Binder.

While regional web printers pursue both productivity and new web markets, for large corporate web printers the situation is largely one of investing in new and more productive presses for the cost savings.The largest commercial and publication web printers are then able to offer more competitive prices to customers for gains in market share.

The four-around press, long popular in Europe in various widths for high-volume publication production, gained some traction in U.S. under Baker Perkins label. At Valassis, Durham (NC) Printing Div., Lithoman IV presses are replacing four, four-around, 57”-wide Baker Perkins G16 presses that began operating there in 1983. But four-arounds didn’t catch on widely in the U.S., owing largely to such considerations as demographic breaks and color conflicts between pages.

But the combination of digital prepress with precise CTP platemaking, plus enhanced inking and color controls, has improved acceptance of four-around webs stateside. Models include the Goss Sunday 4000/64, KBA Compacta 418, 618 and 818 presses, and the MAN Roland Lithoman IV.

Valassis, Durham, now in the process of ramping up its fourth, four-around, single-web MAN Roland Lithoman IV, finds output per operator has more than doubled. Each press is staffed by three pressmen plus one robot operator, which controls the system’s automated material handling equipment.

Last year Valassis set a new four-around press record—1,080,000 impressions, equivalent to 60,480,000 pages—in a 24-hour period. According to MAN Roland, the Lithoman IV single-web arrangement lets Valassis operate the press at full speed while achieving fast makereadies, challenging the notion that a high-volume facility must run multi-web configurations to be competitive. The company notes that the four-around format lets printers produce more with a single web than they could with more complicated and slower-to-set-up multiple web configurations.Featuring Power Plate Loading, direct shaftless drives and the Printnet PECOM system, MAN Roland says the Lithoman IV can go from job-to-job with the agility of a 16-page press and consistently achieves 10-minute changeovers.

Sleeve or tubular blankets are seen by some as additional avenues of enhanced productivity. The gapless or sleeve-type tubular blankets offered by Goss in its line of Sunday presses and by MAN Roland in its Rotoman S line are said to deliver significant paper savings and smoother running operation. Press makers producing mini-gap or conventional gap designs say paper savings can be hard to justify when compared with the higher cost of the sleeve blankets for runs of fewer than 100,000 impressions. The need to learn a new blanket system and inventory new blankets has persuaded some printers to stay with conventional blankets. But many find the labor savings, speed of tubular blanket changing and the elimination of gap bounce very compelling.

For Brown Printing Company, however, gapless is a good fit. One of the largest magazine and catalog printers in North America, Brown will install two new 2×8 Goss Sunday 3000/32 presses and three finishing systems from Goss International at its Waseca, MN, facility.

“We have a strong record of success with gapless Sunday presses,” says Jack Denz, technical director at Brown Printing. Introduced in 2003, the Sunday 3000/32 press is a single-circumference press with an eight-pages-across cylinder. A single-web Sunday can produce up to 3.2 million magazine pages per hour. The first new 2x8 Sunday 3000/32 press at Brown ships this month; the second one in May 2007.