Heidelberg’s Anicolor technology is coming up for its tenth birthday. It was positioned as a way for a B3 sheetfed litho press to compete against the tide of digital presses in short run and with the simplicity of operation that makes digital an appealing prospect.
It would make ready with minimal waste, just a few sheets, and there would be no need to fiddle with the ink/water balance to achieve good colour because this was not necessary.
Instead of a series of rubber covered rollers in an ink train to bring ink to the sheet, the Anicolor uses an anilox roller engraved with cells to bring the ink to the plate and to the paper.
There could be no adjustment of ink flow, beyond alterations to temperature to adjust its viscosity. It is a technology that had been proven in coating units and in flexo presses and, to some extent, in short train newspaper printing. It was also used on some specialist presses, but where waterless printing holds sway.
Heidelberg wanted to remain with relatively conventional inks and dampening solutions and despite the warnings that this would make achieving colour balance complicated, it has worked. And it worked too in allowing litho printers to compete against digital with a short run litho press. Heidelberg has sold around 280 Anicolor presses worldwide in this format.
However, litho’s fight against digital in B3 has almost been conceded. Today, Heidelberg sells few SM52s, either as Anicolors or conventional presses, and has ceased production of the GTO. Instead it sells Ricoh’s range of cut sheet digital presses as the Linoprint portfolio.
Almost as soon as the Anicolor was launched, there were questions about when the technology might appear in a larger format. The technical problems of precise engineering of cylinders across the extra width and the additional risks of inconsistent temperatures possibly delayed developments let alone the focus that Heidelberg had on developing demand for the XL75.
With inline colour control, automated plate changing and automatic set up, the opportunity for an Anicolor 75 in commercial printing seemed limited.
But not in packaging. Carton printers need a way to print short runs with fast turnarounds and with additional special colours. Digital is unproven in this area and the Anicolor 52 was simply too small. The larger format machine eventually entered serial production as the Anicolor 75 a year ago having been shown first at the previous Drupa.
Packaging is the sector that has embraced the Anicolor 75, particularly in pharmaceutical packaging. The first in the UK has been received by a pharmaceutical packaging printer and others are dotted around the globe. The big appeal over digital printing is colour consistency.
“The stability and print quality can be a more important factor for these customers,” says Frank Suesser, product manager for the Anicolor 75. All the other factors apply: short makeready, elimination of waste sheets at start up and changeover between jobs.
Currently he says that 65% of print units sold have been to packaging printers, but in terms of the 30 B2 presses the split between carton and commercial is more even. “The packaging machines are larger,” he explains, “and six or eight printing units and coaters are standard.”
Digital presses are in the main limited to four-colour printing and hitting a brand colour consistently with a digital press has been a barrier to widespread adoption of digital printing in the carton world. The ability to print special colours is crucial for brand and for integrity issues and fluctuations in the reproduction of line work are more obvious than in image areas. Litho retains a key advantage.
In operation, switching between special colours using different ink chambers per colour is crucial. End of the week wash up takes a little longer than on a standard press, but not excessively so.
Jobs are grouped where possible to avoid constant changing of anilox rollers with different screen patterns. This is a process that takes five to ten minutes each time. The anilox rollers need more careful attention every eight weeks.
“Around 50% of the time the ink stays in the chamber because it will be used it the next day,” says Suesser. “The ink stays usable for three days.”
The Anicolor 75 enjoys the same mechanics as the standard XL75, so will run at 18,000sph if required. On short runs this is often not necessary. At RLC Pharmapack near Berlin, its Anicolor 75 sits alongside three other Speedmaster XL75s on the same raised plinths, even if the average run on the Anicolor does not demand the extra delivery height.
RLC is a European packaging group producing confectionery, healthcare, food and pharmaceutical packaging at eight different sites in Germany, Poland and Switzerland. It remains an independent family owned business, but is a member of the Global Packaging Alliance, formed to give international brands the ability to specify work from different countries through a single contact.
At a plant an hour away from Berlin, RLC has its main pharmaceutical factory, designed from the ground up in 2009. The three XL75s were joined last year by the Anicolor 75.
The machines sit inside a new factory that is dedicated to pharmaceutical work, from preparation of artwork to delivery of finished cartons and folded leaflets. The carton presses are lined up at one end of the plant, feeding directly into Bobst platens (four ExpertCut B2 machines and one older SP102CE B1 platen that was kept after the business reequipped in B2) and then into the folder gluers with robotic packing to deliver boxes of cartons to the stores ahead of delivery.
The slick production of just in time quantities is reinforced by noticeboards and posters of the latest lean project that is underway. Its aim is to reduce the volume of waste sheets produced by a further 25%.
Order to delivery is typically two or three days. “The Anicolor supports us in providing that solution,” says managing director Hans-Jürgen Katzer. “It is ideal for cost efficient small scale production for just in time orders.”
As a press for pharmaceutical packaging can handle 20,000 jobs in a year, it is not surprising that Katzer observes: “We are more about makeready than long run production.” A programme to reduce makeready waste will pay huge dividends, even when the Anicolor press is already the least wasteful on site.
Lean extends beyond the pressroom and underpins Pharmapack’s relationship with its customers. “We invite customers to look at the whole value chain and to look for improvements we can make. There is connection via ERP to their systems so that orders are placed electronically. Some have standard systems, some require integration,” he continues.
The spread of work can range from a few hundred packs for highly specialised treatments to up to 1 million units when split into different language versions for countries across Europe. The Anicolor’s sweet spot is at the lower end of this, which means sub 10,000 sheets at a time.
Beyond this the standard XL75s become more efficient. Aside from UV printing which is not offered on the Anicolor, 60-80% of jobs can be printed across the litho presses. The Anicolor uses a slightly different ink, but is produced by Huber, supplier of the more conventional inks, so there are no colour matching problems.
This would not be the case had the company bought digital. Katzer continues: “We investigated digital printing, but we are still not convinced about the quality issues, even if some competitors have tested the technology. For us, Anicolor is the alternative. If we had had digital we would be managing a fourth set of inks which would be more complicated in terms of managing colour.
“Anicolor is something that pharmaceutical printers have been waiting for. The cost reductions are real. This is a massive improvement over conventional printing.”
The future of the Anicolor
The next step for the Anicolor 75 is a perfecting version and then later this year the addition of LED UV curing. It will make the press the ideal short run production platform, according to Suesser.
“We think that perfecting is the most productive solution for printing commercial work,” he says. “We can offer 2/2 up to ten-colour plus coating machines. There is an eight-colour perfector in Wiesloch for customer demonstrations.” This was put through its paces at a recent open day.
“Then there is the addition of UV with the XL75 for printing on plastics and there are customers printing plastic cards in this way in Mexico, China and Spain. This will be available by the end of 2015 for the Anicolor with possibility of interdeck UV, moving the unit according to the application – printing white and curing on plastic before printing the other colours,” says Suesser.
“The perfect match would be a perfecting press with UV which would be interesting for web to print and delivery of jobs the same day,” he concludes.
The rack of ink chambers sits alongside the Anicolor. The ink can remain usable for several days, RCL Pharmacenter explains, helping make a rapid transition from one set of colours to another.
