Heidelberg, Koenig & Bauer and Manroland Sheetfed had announced their latest generation presses in 2020, inline with the Drupa timetable. Komori did not. Instead it has waited until this year to unveil the Advance machines, both a B1 format machine and an SRA1 press. These are both available now, and will eventually become the standard press in the format. A B2 machine will follow.
The G40 Advance is built around the automation software, the integration and the cloud. There are mechanical changes to improve print stability at speed with adjustments to feeder and delivery and to the dampening system.
The most noticeable changes come with the automation building on the sequential makeready that Komori has pioneered. “It is about the combination of single-button operation and KP Connect automation,” says Peter Minis, marketing manager at Komori Europe. “This equates to the highest productivity.”
KP Connect Pro is described as “a revolutionary piece of middleware” and is key to the concept of Connected Automation, acting as the bridge between prepress, finishing and other processes, and delivering a visual means of understanding where the bottlenecks in the factory are as well as optimising the production flow through the factory.
On press, the changes to the feeder improve the pick up of sheets at speed thanks to optimising the air flows around the feeding head to ensure a clean pick up, sheet separation and improvements to sheet alignment into the press.
The upgrades to the delivery also focus on airflow to give the operator greater control over the sheet with adjustment of air in 11 rather than the six zones previously. The aim is to keep the sheet stable at speed.
The Komorimatic dampening system has been redesigned to offer greater stability in colour over a long run and when printing frequent short run jobs, by helping the job get into colour rapidly. The aim is to minimise the film of dampening solution delivered without the risk of emulsification.
The development is also part of the move towards extended gamut printing for packaging print using orange green and violet in addition to the CMYK inks. Komori is calling this Smart Color.
There are changes to quality inspection and closed loop controls which enable hands off printing and hands off makeready.
Once the operator presses the Go button the press runs through a process of loading the job settings, ejecting one set of plates and loading the next automatically. The press then goes through a start up sequence allowing the operator to follow the steps on a monitor. When all the lights related to each print unit turn green the press is ready to run, Print Quality Assessment System applies the settings which it downloads through KP Connect from the cloud while Autopilot checks the print against the PDF of an approved press sheet to reach green status on each unit.
Once this occurs printing begins automatically for the number sheets on the digital job sheet. “The operator has not touched the press,” says Minis.
Komori is not showing the plate handling systems that the German suppliers have developed to help online trade printers handle frequent job changes. Instead it has automated the movement of sheets to pieces of finishing equipment using robotics and automated handling systems.
Both Apressia guillotines and MBO folders can have robotic handling to minimise the labour requirement. This is crucial for Komori because its is all but impossible to recruit people in Japan.
“The industrial environment is changing rapidly and printing industry is no exception,” says Minis. “And it is increasingly challenging to find qualified personnel.
The Lithrone G37 Advance lacks some of the automation aspects of the larger press but is far from a manual machine. It has the PQAS quality management over colour control and registration and scanners to manage quality on either side of the sheet.
Then there is the Impremia NS40, the Japanese company’s interpretation of the Landa S10 nanographic press. Komori calculates break even to offset comes at around 2,000 sheets. The press will be sold as a seven-colour press for carton printing.
The first of the Advance series machines is about to be installed in Europe while a full set up to demonstrate automated integration will be in place in the Utrecht showroom before the end of the year.
