Sparking customers’ interest with innovations

manroland sheetfed presents an insight into future product development and an overview of their commitments

To witness the product presentations and print demonstrations on ROLAND machines from small format presses up to the largest perfecting press, more than one hundred attendees from both the commercial and packaging print sectors joined the manroland sheetfed Technology Forum 2012 held recently in Offenbach. In his opening address, manroland managing director Alfred Rothlaender outlined the importance of this interesting one-day programme, providing an insight into future product development and an overview of the company’s commitment.

Dr Peter Conrady, deputy head of global sales, presented the product portfolio from a ROLAND 200 small format press generally for standard applications and with the highest demands, right up to a format 8 ROLAND 900, XXL press considered to be the largest perfecting machine worldwide. Setting the trend, is manroland’s printnetwork which has over 2000 individual networks worldwide and with its IntegrationPilot software, make-ready times are shortened by up to 25 percent resulting in considerable cost-savings.

The live print run with LEC UV on a six-colour ROLAND 500 press with coating unit and extended delivery more than proved the theoretical remarks. LEC UV reduces the energy consumption for midsize-format presses by up to two-thirds resulting in energy cost savings, while at the same time taking care of the environment.

The ROLAND 700 DirectDrive inspired the commercial printing houses with short print runs and many job changes. The vision of manroland autoprint is the print production of several jobs by pushing only one single button. Intelligent pre-setting, ‘self-learning’ software, simultaneous plate change in only one minute and software for the automation of make-readies makes this vision a reality.

Ulrich Beitel, product manager of manroland sheetfed explained to delegates that up to 62 percent of cold foil consumption can be saved with the new indexed InlineFoiler in combination with the minimum sheet length of 340 mm. Even when the maximum sheet length is covered with cold foil, 20 percent savings are realistic.

manroland sheetfed has also developed a number of performance packages tailored to customers’ requirements handling light weight paper, in-mould labels and much more. Software modifications for the ROLAND 700 HiPrint contribute to shorter make-ready time, higher print quality and reduction of waste sheets. DirectDrive enable print house to correct the print length and the start of print during the print run and the coating plates can be changed simultaneously with the printing plates.

manroland’s Volker Sehring, product manager of printnetwork, explained the benefits of in-line measuring and registering. The InlineColorPilot automatically controls the register; the first good sheet can be achieved after around 100 make-ready sheets. During the print run ProcessMonitor analyses the print quality to conform to the ISO standard value.

High-speed production was demonstrated using the ROLAND 700 HiPrint HS producing 18,000 per hour with an impressive non-stop logistic system at the feeder and delivery.

“Even faster is the ROLAND 900, XXL,” said Jürgen Schunk, manroland’s print consultant, “Four sheets in format 70 x 100 can be printed with one format eight sheet, the ROLAND 900, XXL prints 40,000 sheets in format 70 x 100 per hour.” The huge press backed-up this statistic by printing a 64 page magazine in just one print run.

Introducing the ground-breaking merger of digital and sheetfed offset printing with the InlineInkjet module, Dr Holger Wiese, R&D department underlined a reduction in the number of process steps is more efficient and cost savings.

Around 100 people attended the Technology Forum in Offenbach.