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Value-added finishing has become something of a cliché in the past few years. An umbrella term that can mean just about anything other than plain-vanilla folding, cutting or stitching, it's also one of the few ways currently remaining to make any money in print.

Adding foil, embossing or die-cutting in particular remain at the premium end of value-added finishing, which is why the new half-sheet press from Brandtjen & Kluge, the EHG, is attracting much attention on the world’s printing stage.

Brandtjen & Kluge (or ‘Kluge’ as it’s more simply known) is one of the longer-established names in the print industry. Founded in 1919 by American entrepreneur John Brandtjen and two Norwegian engineers by the name of Kluge, the company made letterpress printing presses in the US alongside its European rivals Heidelberg, Roland and Koenig & Bauer. After the war, when offset litho began to make its first appearance as a likely print technology, Kluge’s third-generation family president Henry Brandtjen Jr famously decided not to risk the new technology, instead transferring Kluge’s letterpress skills into the production of hot-foiling, die-cutting and embossing platens.

Brandtjen subsequently reversed his contra-litho decision in the late 1980s, stepping into offset with the introduction of a single-colour, and later a one-back-one business forms press: Kluge enjoyed considerable success with this press for about a decade until the business forms sector collapsed following the advent of the cheap desktop laser printer. There followed something of an annus horribilis for Kluge, which after much soul-searching went back to its roots and in 2000 repositioned itself as a manufacturer of value-added print finishing equipment.

Meeting demand
Launched originally at GraphExpo in autumn last year, the EHG half-sheet machine is the latest in its series of hot-foiling, embossing and die-stamping lines. It came to Drupa where it attracted a flurry of interest, most of which translated into orders from all corners of the globe. We normally take 60 days to build an EHG, but we’ve had to speed that up a bit to meet the demand, claims international sales manager Thomas Andersen.

Half-sheet is an American term, based on the corresponding ‘full’, or B1, sheet. Hence a half-sheet is a B2 format – and a new one for Kluge, whose reputation has been forged in the B3 format. As Andersen explains, the B3 format was becoming restrictive both for Kluge and for its customers: We were getting a lot of requests for a bigger-format machine that would allow customers to foil, emboss or die-cut without first having to cut the sheet down to size. It saves a lot of time, and therefore money, to work with the sheet you just printed, instead of having to go through another process first.

Another confusing Americanism is Kluge’s use of the word ‘press’ to describe the EHG: in Europe, the word would normally signify a machine that prints. But ‘press’ as a term is a shortened form of ‘letterpress’ – Kluge’s heritage – and refers to the action of a platen on a forme. Anatomically speaking, Kluge’s terminology is correct, but it’s unlikely that the rest of the world will adopt it.

Variable frequency
The EHG is a development of Kluge’s EHF press, which was introduced in 2005 as the firm’s first non-mechanically-controlled machine. The EHG shares its elder sibling’s variable frequency (VF) electronic drive, the successor to Kluge’s earlier mechanical cam-and-shaft driven machines.

Oddly enough, what the VF drive achieves for the EHG is not more, but less speed – a very necessary thing for hot-foiling lines, as Andersen explains: If it was mechanically driven the press could only have a minimum speed of about 1,500 impressions per hour (iph). Because our machines don’t have a variable dwell-time [the length of time the heated platen remains in contact with the foil making a bond between it and the substrate] you slow the press down to get a longer dwell-time, and with thicker substrates that has to be quite slow to achieve a good result.


The EHG’s VF drive allows the press to achieve as few as 900 impressions an hour, while at top whack it can turn out 1,700iph. The same VF drive is indirectly responsible for the wide range of substrate thicknesses that the EHG can handle: from onion-skin up to 5mm board.

The EHG also benefits from Kluge’s 2004 invention, the centrally-adjustable impression strength: this changes the length of the side-arms that drive the platens and eliminates the need for packing (the process of boosting impression strength by slipping a sheet or two of paper or thin-gauge board behind the die). The side-arms are lengthened or shortened, effectively giving the impression an extra squeeze to pull them closer together.

At the front end of the EHG sits Kluge’s standard suction feeder, which takes the paper from a pile that sits vertically on the feed board. It isn’t exactly a continuous feeder, but Kluge offers the option of a pre-loader that stacks another maximum pile length behind the original pile, slowing the machine to a momentary stop and removing a plate from between the two piles to trigger the new pile into the feeder.

Mindful of the step up in size, and therefore handling weight, of the EHG’s sheets and tooling, Kluge has included a ‘toggle hoist’ as standard. The device lifts the locked-up chase and its tooling into and out of position. The company has also introduced a touch of ergonomic enlightenment into its feeder: the EZ-Load, an option to have the feeder lower itself towards the floor for easier loading without back strain.

Optional extras
Other options available for the EHG include one or two extra foil pulls in addition to the standard two, and an optical hologram registration device.

Set-up on the EHG is largely manual. Once the die is locked into the press (all three processes require a die and possibly a counter-die as well if embossing) the operator dials in sheet size and thickness together with the length of pull for each foil-pull device, and then inches individual sheets through the press to check the position of the feeder’s front- and side-lays.

The EHG carries Kluge’s reversible register cam: on older machines there is a side-guide, changed from right to left (in order to avoid a clash between the foil and the register guide itself) by means of an exchangeable cam in a process that takes three or four minutes. The reversible cam is a simple combined cam that changes the registration device from left to right, or vice versa, within two or three seconds.

Kluge machines are all noted for their compact footprint – and one of the ways that they achieve this is their 360° sheet travel path that delivers the processed sheet back to the operator underneath the feeder. But the compact footprint is also responsible for one particular limitation of operation: because it is just a single-platen machine, the EHG can only either die-cut or foil and/or emboss in a single pass. Printers wanting to carry out all three operations must carry out two passes.

Kluge’s customers for the EHG are turning out to be none other than the company’s traditional marketplaces: greetings cards, labels and book covers. They are very enthusiastic, though, notes Andersen, adding: It’s the high-quality end of the market, and it’s an alternative to a Heidelberg platen or cylinder because it’s easier to maintain and use.

SPECIFICATIONS
Max sheet size 560x760mm
Min sheet size 215x280mm
Stock thickness range 25gsm–5mm
Speed range 900-1,700iph
Price from £80,000
Contact Brandtjen & Kluge UK 01453 836522 www.kluge.biz

THE ALTERNATIVES

Bobst SP 76-BM
The Bobst machine is one of the smallest in the Bobst range, but it’s still in a different league to the EHG: faster and with a much bigger footprint. Additionally, it will hot-foil and emboss, but can’t die-cut. Note also that its paper thickness capabilities are much smaller than the EHG.
Max sheet size 560x760mm
Min sheet size 300x260mm
Stock thickness range 80–600gsm
Max speed 7,000iph
Price not available
Contact Bobst UK 01527 519700 www.bobstgroup.com

Gietz FSA 870
Gietz’ compact machine spawned some high-profile sales at Drupa. It’s a B2 machine with a much faster speed than the EHG, while occupying a slightly larger footprint. Like all platen-based machines, the FS 870 can’t die-cut in the same pass as embossing or foiling.
Max sheet size 560x870mm
Min sheet size not available
Stock thickness range 70gsm–3mm
Max speed 6,000iph
Price not available
Contact Stanley Press Equipment 01625 429211 www.s-p-e.co.uk

Kama ProCut 74
Kama is riding high in the half-sheet commercially-led die-cutting/foiling sector at present. The ProCut 74 is chiefly a die-cutter/embosser but can be retrofitted with a foil stamping module to carry out either cutting/embossing or foil stamping in a single pass. A registration unit is available for hologram application, and while its footprint isn’t quite as tiny as the EHG’s, it’s still small.It also has an optional ‘hot cut’ module for plastics cutting.
Max sheet size 600x740mm
Min sheet size 279x210mm
Stock thickness range 100–1,500gsm
Max speed 5,000iph
Price not available
Contact Kama UK 0844 567 2500 www.kama.info