Drupa 2024 is set to be a milestone event for Komori International Europe, says its chief commercial officer Ulrich Sause.
The company will occupy 1,500m2 in Hall 15, much as it has before, and will show three presses: a seven-colour B1 Lithrone with double coater, an eight-colour perfecting SRA1 litho press and the J-Throne, a new B2 inkjet press. All are new machines, but KIE has greater objectives.
“We want to create the Komori brand,” says Sause. “We want to convince print companies that say ‘How can we get to work with a company that’s smaller than other manufacturers?’.”
The full story of Komori, now celebrating its 100th year, is not known, he says. Few appreciate that Komori is financially secure with none of the outstanding loans that others have, with a diverse product line that includes security presses able to print currency, with presses for printed electronics and a history of technical innovation. Komori, for example, was the first to introduce automatic plate changing in 1990.
The challenge, says Sause, is to present “the true value of Komori”. That may not be too great a challenge. The company attracted 300 from across Europe to its headquarters in Utrecht last week where it practised its Drupa presentation, albeit with a generation of machines that is on the point of being superseded by EX models that have reduced energy requirements, so are deemed more sustainable.
All machines are networked to prepress, scheduling and so on through KP Connect, its cloud based control system. This feeds through to the new Komori Information Display. This now contains all information on a single screen, including a CO2 counter. Operators are able to drill down, but no longer need to navigate through different screens.
The packaging press, Lithrone GLX740A+CC, was demonstrated running orange, green and violet inks to achieve an extended colour gamut and so replace the need to run Pantone inks and the wash ups that this entails. This remains a demonstration as teams in Japan are working on the inks and settings that are needed to bring extended colour printing into folded cartons.
The commercial press is a the GL837PA, an eight-colour perfecting press able to run autonomously with Autopilot. After the press has run to colour after a plate change in 70 sheets, the Autopilot system measures each sheet to compare with the PDF sent to the platesetter. This takes a further 25-30 sheets to fix and begin the print run. At the Utrecht showroom the press ran through three 500-sheet jobs before the delivery pile was moved to the pallet feed on an MBO K8 folder by an Agilo autonomous robot. A CoBo stack robot was used to load a pallet with folded sections, keeping each section separate.
This is Komori’s Smart Factory concept to minimise human labour. At Drupa a further robot will cross the aisle to the Postpress Alliance stand where it will be finished on a Hohner HSB 13000 saddle stitcher.
The main argument for this press comes down to the savings from the SRA1 sheet format, less aluminium to buy for each plate, less blanket material and a 40% saving in energy consumption compared to the B1 press. The EX version reduces energy consumption further: the air blowers run from efficiency DC motors for example and savings come from fewer sheets needed at makeready. Its Smart Colour technology takes three rollers away from the ink train to give a faster response and greater control on areas of light coverage.
The third press at Drupa will be a second generation B2 inkjet press. The first machine was a joint venture with Konica Minolta, Komori being responsible for sheet transport and KM for the inkjet heads and inks. The J-Throne 29 is a ground up Komori design. It runs at 6,000sph and while it is still an LED cured UV press, there is no need to preheat the inks before printing.
