UK printers are showing an increasing interest in automated print and finishing technology, judging by interest in the Horizon Smart Factory open house event.
This put 22 different production cells through their paces over a week of demonstrations streamed online with viewers from the UK out numbering printers from any other country in Europe, despite the English language presentations taking place at 7am.
The presentations covered the gamut of technologies that are already part of the portfolio, products that are new to market and would have been introduced at Drupa as well as concepts for full hands off production using robots to move work around. While these are not likely to see the light of day outside Japan perhaps, for some time, they are an indication of where printers might need to go if skills shortages persist, if recruitment becomes more challenging and if it becomes necessary to restrict the number of staff working in a finishing department because of Covid or other pandemic causing disease.
The products in the spotlight included a fully automated cross folder, the AFV566 FKT, which takes the already fast changeover AFC version to the next level. The operator has no need for any manual intervention, not even to set roller gaps. Everything is controlled through a touch screen and data downloaded from Horizon’s ICE cloud production control network. Setting the B2 folder for the next job is a matter of pressing a handful of icons and the yes/no button.
It becomes 20% faster at job changeover than the previous machine, accumulating into a substantial saving when coping with hundreds of short run jobs in a day.
This is the result of a machine learning system based on known fold patterns and set ups. There is potential to increase the accuracy by mining the big data accumulated as the population of these machines linked to the cloud increases.
It will also automatically run at the ideal speed for any fold set up and paper, says IFS UK technical director Jason Seaber, eliminating variation between operators that err on the cautious side and those that are more confident. The first folders will ship from Japan next month.
A second new folder moves the small format folder from a maximum of six buckle plates to eight, giving it the ability to fold a sheet into 96pp pages to increase its appeal for short run pharmaceutical folding work.
Horizon also showcased the StitchLiner MkV, a new machine that extends the capabilities of the portfolio rather than replacing the very popular StitchLiner MkIII. The new model is aimed at continuous feed inkjet printing with a Hunkeler unwind unit feeding into a sheeter. The bridge unit, derived from the feed table of a folder, is capable of a wide range of stocks at high speed, takes each sheet through a scoring wheel, via a plow fold to accumulate the folded sheets on a saddle. When filled the book is moved forward, a cover added if necessary and it is stitched and trimmed in the normal way.
In the StitchLiner MkIII the sheets are accumulated before scoring and folding, but this is fed from either a digital sheet feeder or collator bins. The MkV is entirely digital. It is capable of producing variable pagination products on the fly and, thanks to the verification possible through five inspection cameras, to produce personalised booklets. Barcodes are used to ensure the cover is a correct match for the book, for example.
On the perfect binding side, Horizon had already announced the BQ500 earlier this year. It has now revealed details of the automatic book block feeding for this and for end papering and gauzing units that can run either inline with the binder or as stand alone units and so taking Horizon into case binding territory. One of the demonstrations planned for Drupa had been a line linking a Meccatechnica sewing line, delivering sections to the binder to produce a finished book to block ready for casing in.
The BQ500 will also cope with loose sheet blocks. During the Open House the demonstration featured the binder inline to two cut sheet digital presses and then to an HT300 three-side trimmer.
The other new product on display was the the RDN 4055 rotary die cutter. This has a new separator unit and, if required, a stacking unit at the end to allow one operator to feed, run and unload the unit. The system will now take a minimum of a 50mm product, allowing a business card set to be imposed 36 up on a sheet rather than 30 up. It is a 20% gain, resulting in the need for seven rather than nine sheets for a 250 business card batch.
An automatic guided vehicle was a glimpse into the future. It removed stacks from the delivery of an RMGT press and delivered this into a folder for online production of booklets without any operator involvement. Few will be chasing this particular set up, but Horizon’s other introductions will be heading this way in the new year.
