As part of a significant investment strategy to improve efficiency and broaden their offering to customers across the whole business, UK-based Castle Colour Packaging of Norwich have invested in a Rapida 106 seven colour press with coater. The purchase is the latest stage in a programme of investment which has encompassed pre-press workflow, additional finishing capabilities as well as additional manufacturing and warehousing facilities.
Castle Colour Operations and Technical Director Paul Densley states, “We selected Koenig and Bauer as our partner because we wanted a robust packaging press from a supplier who had designed the machine with the user in mind. The service back up looks very impressive and the extensive training and performance programme offered will allow us to make full use of the quality and performance capabilities of this machine. We share the same vision of increased automation in the packaging work flow and coupled with our other investments the whole package is very exciting for our customers.”
Paul Densley and Len Taylor.
The new press, set to be installed in April 2019, is an 18,000 sheet per hour seven colour plus coater with the ability to print with both conventional and UV inks and coatings. Typically for a packaging press, it is equipped with a CX package which allows printing of substrates up to 1.2mm thick. Additionally, the press is also equipped with a plastics printing package and a 450mm raise. As is standard with the Rapida 106, the press is supplied with sensoric infeed system and servo driven motors for the feeder drives and suction belts. This feature enables mark-free, reliable, high speed feeding on all stocks.
ErgoTronic Autorun technology also allows several jobs to be queued on the press. Minimum operator involvement is required as jobs are autonomously produced to the desired colour quality and run length. The fully automatic plate changing and semi automatic coating form changing also allow plates to be changed in under two minutes. The press has also been specified with the inline colour control system, QualiTronic ColorControl, which allows extremely tight colour control throughout the print run with Delta E values based upon individual key values rather than an averages across the sheet. However, additionally included in the package is QualiTronic PrintCheck which enables image inspection to an ‘O.K.’ sheet on every sheet during a production run. To complete the set of quality control and automation tools, auto camera registration and image zoom has been selected. To ensure compliance with the ISO 12647-2 colour standard, reporting via Quality Pass will allow scoring of the print quality against the parameters indicated in the I.S.O. 12647-2 document.
As monitoring and improving production efficiency is essential to Castle Colour Packaging’s management team and to ensure press performance stays at its peak, LogoTronic Professional and Cockpit have been selected. These tools allow detailed analysis of the output and quality produced by the press as well as indicating where improvements could be made.