With Heidelberg and Koenig & Bauer promising to make carton presses the highlight of their stands at Drupa, their Japanese rivals are promising to do the same. Both RMGT and Komori will have highly automated powerful B1 carton presses to show off to Drupa visitors.
Komori will highlight a seven-colour Lithrone GX740+CC twin coater press during an open house in Utrecht this week. This is expected to be in the spotlight at Drupa in six weeks’ time. The press is equipped with high levels of automation, fitting Komori’s Connected Automation theme for the exhibition, including a new Smart Color function. This will “change your perception of efficient packaging production with special colours” says Komori.
Smart Colour enables printers to reach the majority of spot colours using orange and green in addition to CMYK. This means says Komori that there is no need to wash up between jobs and load the special colour, thus productivity is increased and waste reduced. The press reaches 25 metres from feed to delivery.
RMGT will be introducing a new B1 press, the 1060LX, typically delivered as a six-colour plus coater plus extended delivery and an upgrade from the existing B1 model. RMGT is retaining the use of specials, running jobs at a Drupa showing high speed changeover from job to job.
The press will run at 17,100sph, even on heavier stock, and can run continuously thanks to non stop feeder and delivery shutter. It includes fully automatic plate change and the ability to prepare a varnish coater for a subsequent job while the press is running and LED UV for instant drying.
Both companies will also be demonstrating SRA1 presses, RMGT introducing the 970 to Europe in a eight-colour perfecting with LED curing configuration and Komori the Lithrone 837P, also as an eight-colour perfector. This includes the next step towards autonomous operation through Autopilot.
Komori is promising extensive use of robots, either as static arms to load and unload pallets, or as mobile robots to move work in progress of materials between press and finishing devices.
