A NEW GRAVURE CONCEPT

A long-standing problem with gravure printing has been the expense of downtime to change over to the next job. Wider and faster presses, designed to run more efficiently and save printers money, required even more downtime than older models. What the industry needed was a "nonstop" press. A printer and a press builder worked together to design a new press that theoretically could change a six -color job in 30 min instead of the usual 1.5 h. The press features two printing locations in each gravure station and uses two gear boxes, two impression rolls, and two trolleys with inking and doctoring systems. While one location is printing, the other can be made ready on the press. The new press is less than a meter wide and has a top speed of 150 m/min. For short-run gravure of less than 50,000 m, the new press gives a better hourly yield than a typical 1.2-m wide press running at a speed of 213 m/min. Two of the eight-color presses now in commercial use have demonstrated that job changes can be accomplished in 20 min or less-faster than the original goal.