IFS made the formal UK launch of the Horizon Smart Slitter at the Print Show a £70,000 challenge to the dominance of Duplo in the multi finisher market.
IFS does not mention in Duplo, referring only to other suppliers of machines able to cut, slit, crease, fold and perforate in one action, but its Japanese rival has a strong lead in terms of units in use.
Horizon is, however, undaunted and has spent time looking at delivering extra value to customers. It has resulted in a first UK sale of the machine to a company in East Anglia.
“This is quite unique and a new field for us,” says Keisuke Nakai, who was over from Japan to demonstrate and explain the machine. “We have been strong in binding, folding and cutting. The Smart Slitter can do something new.”
It is not an entirely new field as the Smart Stacker is a B2 format machine that offers a similar range of functions. The first of these in the UK is running at Route 1 Print in Rotherham inline to its HP Indigo 10000. Nor is the Smart Slitter entirely new. Units have been installed in Japan and the US, restricting the supply to Europe until now.
There are a number of features that Horizon stresses, including the ability to run partial perforations both across and along the sheet to create tear out coupons for example. It can take a sheet to 670mm in length (370mm across), so coping with the increasing number of 6pp digital presses installed.
“We started developing this in 2013, launching it at Drupa,” says Nakai.
The sheet is fed on to a registration table and registered using conventional side and front lays. A camera reads a barcode to pull down information about the settings for that sheet. It can be a stand 1D, 2D or data matrix code. As the sheet moves forwards, an image shift is accounted for, moving both X and Y axis if necessary. It also registers to the previous action, a crease to a the previous crease for example.
Access to the slitting, creasing and perforating models is through panels on the side of the machine. The cassettes slide out and back in rather than being lifted in and out of the machine. It is possible to replace blades when needed rather than replacing the cassette itself.
There are three slitter modules, each with twin blades. This enables the Smart Slitter to remove the gutter between business cards as well as handling full bleed cards for example. Business cards are delivered into a special stacking module. Products are otherwise fed to a conveyor delivery.
There is a touch panel interface to set up jobs with the option of a Smart Connect module to both accept JDF jobs and deliver JMF data back to the workflow. The operator can store and retrieve setting and step and repeat settings for multiple up jobs on a sheet. It can also accept a PDF file and use this to overlay the position of creases, cuts and folds and so on.
“We believe this is going to be very competitive against the rival machines,” says IFS technical director Jason Seaber.
Horizon’s B3 Smart Slitter received its UK launch at the Print Show last week. It is the first multi finisher for the company, but has been based on knowledge gained from the B2 Smart Stacker. Demand for the Smart Slitter from elsewhere in the world has delayed UK availability until now.
