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Here's a trick question. What's the perfect press to print a sub-500 copies job? A DI press maybe, with a six- or seven-minute makeready and plates imaged on-press? A digital press, with almost zero makeready? A B3 or even a B2 offset press with colour-down at job end, auto-washes galore and clever pre-inking? All of the above could turn out a sub-500 job and protect the precious 1-3% profit margin of the average commercial sheetfed operation. But a B1 long perfector? Too big, too expensive, too long to makeready. Surely some mistake?

There’s no mistake, according to Mark Nixon, sales director of sheetfed presses at KBA UK, whose latest task is to promote the all-new Rapida 106. This may change the way the market thinks about short runs. It’s an extremely automated press that’s efficient at any length of run from 500 up to – well, name your limit. It’s a seismic change in makeready philosophy, he says.

Backing up these extravagant claims is the undeniably jaw-dropping performance of the Rapida 106 at Drupa, where, on the request of a potential US buyer visiting on 10 June, the eight-colour long perfector on the stand took 59 minutes to turn out no less than 15 jobs, each of 520 good sheets. That’s 14 complete makereadies including blanket washes, 120 plate changes and 14 changes of delivery pile. To put the Rapida 106’s speed of makeready into context, a standard long perfector might take anywhere between about six and 15 minutes to makeready. Apparently the customer signed on the dotted line as soon as the demo had finished.

Re-engineered
To slash makereadies this far, KBA’s engineers have re-designed and re-engineered many of the 106’s components under the brand name DriveTronic. It’s a moniker that KBA has used for many years for its latest automation inventions, and it refers to the core drive system of the press, which in the case of the 106 is entirely servo-motor driven.

The first of the re-engineered components is the SIS feeder, which has no sidelay. Sidelays are described by Mark Nixon as a bit Heath Robinson, when you think about it – the sheet comes down the feed board and smashes into the headlay and gets pulled over by the sidelay. Instead, KBA’s engineers have designed a moveable feeder intake bar that is informed about the sheet’s position by a sensor tracking the sheet down the feed board; the intake bar moves to pick up the sheet, avoiding the crumples, bounces and potential damage to the sheet of a standard sidelay system. The result is a surprisingly naked-looking infeed. The other advantage of the SIS device is that it makes setting the ‘sidelay’ much easier and faster.

The press’s feeder is also shaftless. The benefit at the feed end has to do with smoother and more reliable feeding, particularly at the 106’s 18,000sph top running speed. It also helps to cope with thicker stocks – the 106’s top thickness for solid board is 0.8mm, but 1.6mm for corrugated.

Saving time
Perhaps the biggest winner in the makeready-slashing stakes is the plate change, which is not only fully automatic, but also simultaneous with all other scheduled makeready processes. Simultaneity is the big factor here: even fully automated plate changing still takes a minute per unit, so it’s the fact that every unit is changed at the same time, which happens simultaneously with washing, that makes the big difference. In this, the latest version of DriveTronic corrects a two-year discrepancy that KBA rivals were not slow to point out: the inability to wash the blanket, impression cylinder and rollers at the same time. We are now able to do it all together and it saves a great deal of time, says Nixon.

In fact, the plate change isn’t the slowest makeready task on the press – the blanket wash takes about two minutes and therefore that’s the length of the makeready.

The two-minute blanket wash can be reduced still further by DriveTronic control software that disengages the inking train for the last 10 sheets of any given job, so you use the last 10 impressions to sheet off the blankets, and that cuts down the blanket wash by at least half, says Nixon.

Like all KBA presses, the 106 is able to disengage any unused inking towers, which is a big time-saver for job changes going from five or more colours to four-back-four, and vice versa. Nixon explains: If you’re not using the fifth unit [and the tenth, by extension, on a long perfector] you have to wash it up, apply conditioning paste to the rollers and run the job, and then wash it up again for the next five-colour job and put the fifth colour in. KBA research shows that typically, most B1 press job schedules demand a five-to-four change and back again on 20% of their jobs.

A host of smaller, but handy, features on the 106 will endear it to minders. For instance, there’s automatic suction ring positioning at the delivery end: on keying in the job size, this moves the delivery’s suction rings to the appropriate non-print gutters in the imposition. The existing KBA Qualitronic quality control system has been augmented by an on-press scanning densitometer. And there’s also a video register control (VRC) that goes beyond a normal remit for this technology by identifying the right plate on the right cylinder to avoid sequencing mistakes.

However, the VRC also sidesteps the potential for significant waste by reading, rather than a register mark on the printed sheet, the actual plate on the cylinder itself. Automatically triggering the adjustment of lateral, circumferential and diagonal registration (and incidentally, the 106 cocks its transfer grippers rather than the plate), the VRC will get the 106’s control system to move all cylinders into position to align with each other. It’s known as DriveTronic Ident, and as Nixon says, it takes about a hundred sheets out of waste and saves that three-to-four minutes of running time before you discover you’re not in register.

New territory
KBA has also ventured into UV territory with the decision to design and manufacture its own interdeck and delivery UV curing system. Doing so has given the manufacturer the opportunity to rethink several traditional limitations of UV technology – most notably the ability to swap units between interdeck and delivery. Most UV systems on sheetfed presses have two distinct types of unit: one type for the delivery, a second type to sit interdeck. It means you have to carry spares for each type, and you can’t swap if one type goes down, explains Nixon. The KBA own-label system, by contrast, is an identical unit for both delivery and interdeck, and to boot is supported by KBA’s remote diagnostics support desk. But we will fit traditional UV systems if customers prefer, says Nixon.

The Rapida 106 will not replace any presses in the KBA portfolio: the German manufacturer intends to continue manufacture of its existing 105 model, but will deck it out with less automation as a means of distinguishing the now entry-level machine from the flagship.

Since Drupa, Nixon has made three sales in the UK: two to commercial printers, one to a packaging printer. Both commercial printers were in the magazine area, which is where the 106 excels. If you think about it, if the makeready is only as fast as the slowest process, it takes more time if you have to wash the rollers too, explains Nixon. So if you stay on the same stock and change plates but not inks, you have the fastest-possible makeready.

He is excited by the 106’s possibilities in a market hungry for time savings: Potentially you could replace two presses with a single 106, or you could replace another press with a 106 and get twice the work from it. With the right kind of work – like magazine sections – you could potentially even replace three older presses with a single 106, with much less capital cost, lower running costs and associated wage savings, which all goes straight on to the bottom line.

SPECIFICATION

Max sheet size 1,060x740mm (identical for perfecting/straight)
Min sheet size 480x400mm (340mm on straight)
Max running speed up to eight units: 15,000sph perfecting, 18,000sph straight; 8-17 units: 15,000sph
Number of units 1-17
Price from £1.5m
Contact KBA (UK) 01923 819922 www.kba-print.de/uk

THE ALTERNATIVES

Heidelberg Speedmaster XL105
Heidelberg’s Speedmaster 102 has become an entry-level B1 machine with the launch of über-model XL105. Customers say that on the 105 they can double the output of a standard 102. The XL105 has an optional spectrophotometer, every pre-set in the book and is automated to the teeth.
Max sheet size 750x1,050mm
Min sheet size 350x500mm
Max speed 18,000sph
Max number of units 12
Price from £464,000
Contact Heidelberg UK 020 8490 3500 www.heidelberg.com

Komori Lithrone SX40
Announced just ahead of Drupa, it claims to change six plates in two minutes via a non-stop plate removal feature. Komori has also rethought the feeder and frontlay, which is now better able to handle lightweight materials.
Max sheet size 750x1,050mm
Min sheet size not available
Max speed 18,000sph
Max number of units not available
Price not available
Contact Komori UK 0113 279 9900 www.komori.com

Manroland 700
Manroland explicitly sought to minimise downtime in the design of the R700. Innovations include a special ink-repelling surface for the ink fountains and a range of QuickChange options cuts makereadies in coating, ink fountain cleaning, restart waste and stock thickness among others. Three plate change options from manual, semi- and fully-auto. Inline sheet inspection.
Max sheet size 780x1,040mm
Min sheet size 340x380mm
Max speed 17,000sph
Max number of units 16
Price Six-colour: from £1.1m
Contact Manroland GB 020 8648 7090 www.weareprint.co.uk

Mitsubishi Diamond V3000
On its launch in 2007, the Diamond V3000 was famously billed by then Mitsubishi UK managing director Thomas Doliwa as 13 months’ production in one year. Includes semi-automated maintenance, immediate leap from inch mode to full speed, automated roller settings, single-touch ink key settings and simultaneous plate change (not fully automatic).
Max sheet size 750x1,050mm
Min sheet size 540x360mm
Max speed 16,000sph
Max number of units 16
Price from £900,000 for five-colour with coater
Contact Mitsubishi Lithographic Presses UK 0113 240 7584 www.mitsubishipresses.co.uk