Epic Colour has addressed a bottleneck in die cutting with installation of a Horizon rotary die cutter at its factory in Dorchester.
The Horizon RD4055DM, supplied by IFS, will relieve pressure on the company’s Kama foiling/die cutter and will swallow short run work thanks to a rapid makeready.
Quality is unaffected, says technical director Jon Formon, and the Horizon can handle the thicker material that is used for swing ticket production. However, the Horizon cannot match the Kama’s ability to automatically clear the hole for string on this product, so Kama remains the preferred approach for this product.
The Horizon will cope with growing volumes of short run and even personalised packaging, some of which has been foiled on the Kama.
The magnetic rotary die used on the Horizon, supplied by Rotometrics of Kocher & Beck, is more expensive than a conventional die, but as one die can be stepped across each sheet for a maximum of three impressions a time, each die can be smaller. That is a crucial element in deciding the production path for a job.
Most of the sheets for the Horizon will comes from the company’s HP Indigo 7900 and will need to be processed quickly. The rapid make ready on the Horizon provides a huge advantage on short runs, says Formon. While the Kama makes ready faster than the majority of flatbed die cutters, it is still slower than the new machine on shorter runs.
Epic is working to understand the break even points where the conventional machine takes over from the rotary unit. The RD4055 has a maximum throughput of 6,000sph on a sheet of 400x550mm. The Kama runs at up to 5,500sph on a B2 sheet. However, the speed of the RD4055 is dependent on the complexity of the die and whether on the Horizon, the sheet has to be stepped for multiple actions.
The unit uses a camera to pick a central printed mark on the sheet and adjust registration if necessary. This is less likely now than with previous generations of digital press.
The company examined other machines before investing in the RD4055DM to join a Horizon folder installed four years ago. “We were impressed with the quality of the folder so we were comfortable buying a machine from the same stable and buying through IFS. We were already familiar with the software. The robustness and footprint were also impressive. I looked at a number of machines but kept coming back to the Horizon.”
