What the materials cover
These presentation materials come from the second European Gravure Printing Conference, which focused on the efficient production of short runs. The talks explore how gravure printing on flexible packaging films can deliver the high print quality demanded by retailers and brand owners while keeping costs affordable. Topics include narrow-web machine concepts, savings potential in makeready and reproduction, standardized processes, short-run challenges in fresh food and pharmaceutical packaging, colour management, and common print defects. The documents are aimed at decision-makers in production, purchasing, sales, development and key account management who want to assess the competitiveness of gravure printing.
From Adolf Ahrens -
Over the last years the order sizes of the food packaging sector became smaller and smaller. Even if food consumption in Central Europe stayed nearly constantly more and more private and regional labels or premium, bio and wellness brands are taking over the shelves, especially in the chilled sector
... [Show more] of processed meats and cheeses. The result is a split of total quantities within the segments which causes a drastic reduction of lot sizes.
To gear up for this situation is a hard challenge – especially for gravure printing.
The prepress as well as the printing production including their technical equipment were conceived for high circulations.
With a consequent standardisation of the processes of their in house repro department and cylinder production and an intelligent adaptation of planning, their machine technology and the whole peripheral equipment Wipak managed to adapt to this trend even with wide format printing machines
Extent: 37 pages, Size: 843.82 kB, Language:
german
From Volker Haske -
Branded companies and retailers alike expect an ever-increasing print quality for their film packaging. Simultaneously, decreasing order sizes and continuous cost pressure challenge manufacturers and converters to find or combine respectively printing technologies, which are suitable and effective f
... [Show more]or them.
The paper is a field report from the point of view of a flexoprinter, who has successfully implemented rotogravure as a complementary printing process. The paper will point out the reasons for this decision and also illustrate the process as to how to select from the available machine concepts and technologies respectively (e.g. sleeve system). In doing so, both, rotogravure and flexographic printing will be compared to each other from the point of view of a printer
Extent: 22 pages, Size: 664.82 kB, Language:
german
From Harry Sieljes -
Efficient Short Run Production in Gravure is easier said than done. It is, anyhow, far more then just installing modern narrow web gravure printing equipment. Critical aspects are the pressroom organization that must be changed from a linear meters bulk generator to a set-up- and waste-control focus
... [Show more]sed organization. The ink department and more-over the systems that enable to re-process press returns and as well the number of ink systems should be part of the short run philosophy, as is the attitude of the pressoperators (performing and maximizing change-overs instead of watching the machines printing) and the way working methods are implemented (such as pit-stop philosophy and parallelity instead of sequential working). Raw material waste in % is a major factor to be controlled, not only from the perspective of machine design- but also including ERP aspects. From an external point of view there are many limitations as suppliers from direct materials and tools do not, in real life, consider short run gravure as (potentially) major business. Finally, other print-technologies should be considered as well in the short run business, my initial scepticism regarding web offset for hybrid packaging purposes has been altered to web offset as a technology that starts to carry surmountable problem areas (critical issues are inks, web tension and machine hour-costs)
Extent: 19 pages, Size: 53.05 kB, Language:
german
From Dr. Matthias Henker -
Although the gravure printing process is well know as a very precise process with good reproducibility and it is mechanically relative simple a wide range of problems can occur in the daily production. Scumming, doctor blade stripes, comets, missing dots are just a few. In the presentation typical p
... [Show more]roblems are shown and their reasons and some ink related solutions are discussed
Extent: 28 pages, Size: 988.48 kB, Language:
german
From Lothar Roth -
Color Management will be focused this time not from a technical aspect at all. Anyway, for a better understanding a comparison has to be done on color management for packaging printing versus standard 4C printing. Without any doubt, color management has raised the level of quality and consistency an
... [Show more]d given a predictable and stable process for printing.
But: Was kind and amount of effort has to be given as input to get a good and reliable color matching during press run? What kinds of cost are coming up? Where do we have cost savings at the press run if a color management is properly implemented? Does this effort give a payback? Are there other ways to handle this issue?
A lot of questions that will be illustrated during the presentation
Extent: 31 pages, Size: 332.44 kB, Language:
german
From Jürgen Möller and Frank Woltering -
Due to automation, new technologies and improved process control the price of rotogravure cylinders has come down in the past years.
But still the contribution of printing tools to the overall costs of a print job is highly relevant.
When talking about ideas and concepts to make rotogravure print jo
... [Show more]bs more profitable, especially on short-runs, cylinders suddenly become a key aspect.
Since the very beginning 4packaging is manufacturing rotogravure cylinders in a fully automated production line.
During our presentation we will share some insides and describe the relation between physical cylinder properties such as type or dimension and their impact on the potential of automation.
We want to initiate a discussion about a narrow web cylinder concept that allows printers and cylinder suppliers to maximize automation, bring down cost and make better business
Extent: 116 pages, Size: 19.09 mB, Language:
german
