Micropress has staged the first of three customer open days to demonstrate the power of its recently installed Heidelberg Speedmaster XL106-8P with plate to unit technology. This is the first of this highly automated press to be installed in the UK and in the first ten worldwide.
The key mechanical development is a system for taking plates from a cassette and delivering them to a print unit using a robotic system that grips the plate and places in the slot for automatic plate changing. The system then lifts the spent plate returning it to a further cassette for disposal. Each cassette can hold 80 plates, enough for ten sections.
“We wanted to have small groups of people to see the latest innovations that we have invested in and the direction the business is taking,” says joint managing director Rob Cross.
“We have always invested and in the last 18 months have invested more than normal across the business, from software development, a 100 plates an hour platesetter from Kodak, binding and stitching on the finishing side as well as the new press.”
The Reydon company is making use of robotics not only to load plates to the press. It has three CoBo Stackers and a P-Stacker to load sections from its B1 folders to pallets and an AMR robot to move folded sections to the next process step.
There has also been a £1 million investment in solar panels, which says Cross “means that on a sunny day like today, we will be printing 100% with solar”.
The company’s workflow is being adjusted to direct short run litho jobs to the new press. It is capable of printing runs on their hundreds though 1,000 sheets seems to be the split from its digital presses, led by a Canon iX3200, to litho.
“It’s not just about the robotics,’ says Cross. “There’s lots of technology under the hood. The software running it is the first phase of autonomous printing on an offset press – and we are the only ones with this in the world.
“There’s a revolution coming, with tools like AI affecting manufacturing with robotics and automation. This is going to move fast so in future the landscape will look very different and we have to be ahead of that wave rather than behind it.”
