Product of the Week

That run lengths are getting shorter, and timescales are likewise plummeting, is such a truism of commercial sheetfed offset print that it’s become a kind of wallpaper: everywhere you look, but never noticed. For at least a decade now, press manufacturers’ R&D efforts have been focused on cutting unproductive downtime and makeready, in an attempt to keep presses running for as high a proportion of their operative shifts as possible. But it takes a holistic approach to press design and manufacture to come up with a B1 press that really breaks the downtime mould. Such a press – at least, so its manufacturer claims – is the new Mitsubishi Diamond V3000: a machine that has had its entire chassis, architecture and componentry considered in the light of reducing downtime, and which sports a pile of incremental tweaks that make it, according to Mitsubishi UK managing director Thomas Doliwa, “the most productive B1 press on today’s market”.

Soundbites aplenty have greeted the rolling launch of the Diamond V3000, but the one that will probably grab most headlines is Doliwa’s invention. “I tell people it’s 13 months’ production in one year,” he says. “All the time-savings are five minutes here, 10 minutes there, 40 seconds somewhere else, and it all mounts up.”

Automated maintenance
Maintenance is one area where the V3000 has significant advantages to offer a printer. “We’ve become aware that plenty of printers just don’t do maintenance,” says Doliwa. “We had this one guy, he called our engineers with a problem, and the engineer said ‘when did you last lube the bearings?’ The guy said ‘what?’ It turned out he’d never done any lubrication.” Although, Doliwa says, you’d think printers could be trusted to protect the life of their £1m press investment “it’s surprising how many people think they don’t need to”. But that situation is itself a product of the pressure on commercial sheetfed printers: maintenance equals downtime, and although breakdown equals a lot more downtime, breakdown is a risk that many printers are prepared to take in exchange for more productive time.

By way of putting a lid on this can of worms, the Diamond V3000 has been designed from the ground up for easy, fast maintenance with a high level of automation. For lubricating the ball-bearings, a dedicated button on the control desk moves all the cylinders into a position where the grease nipples are exposed: the operator simply walks from unit to unit with a grease gun, where normally that button would be a separate one for each unit, meaning the operator would wait for perhaps 20 seconds on each unit for the cylinder to move into position. To help with this operation, the traverse beam between the press’s side-frames has also been moved to give freer cylinder access.

Roller diagnosis
Another fiddly part of the maintenance programme – checking the nip pressure and position of the impression and dampening rollers – has also been made easier. The two common roller errors are skew and inadequate pressure, and both are checked by an automatic push-button function on the control desk that prints a sheet, which is then analysed by on-press software. The software gives a readout that is then used to re-set the rollers – this is a manual process, but the automation of the diagnosis stage saves “probably 20 minutes,” says Doliwa.

Other productivity-enhancing features are targeted at the reduction of downtime, rather than maintenance. The V3000 doesn’t have the facility to gradually ramp up the production speed. Once a sheet has been passed for colour and registration, it goes straight from inch mode to full speed. The result is that start-up waste is reduced from a typical 50 sheets to 10-15.

The Diamond V3000 also has automated roller settings that cut down the time it takes to adjust rollers to a changed sheet thickness. On other B1 presses – the old Diamond 3000 included – it can take a minute or two per unit to re-set roller pressures. But on the new V3000, the operator keys in the new sheet thickness and the rollers are set automatically.

A nod to the less-skilled operator that now typically operates a multi-million pound sheetfed press is evident in Mitsubishi’s new Colour Navigator facility. Essentially a touchscreen-operated function, the navigator allows an operator “to set the inks to print lighter or darker just with a single button,” Doliwa says. “Before, you’d have had to alter them all separately.” The Colour Navigator function is so simple, he says, that customers who come in for press-passing can be shown the touchscreen so they can alter their own colour balance. “We’re hearing from Japan [where the V3000 has been launched to the domestic market] that this really goes down well with customers,” he adds.

There’s a choice of three plate change systems on the V3000. Mitsubishi has retained its regular semi-automatic plate change as the system of choice for printers doing long runs who don’t require the additional cost in order to save a few minutes’ downtime. Then there’s a new simultaneous plate change system, in which all the cylinders position themselves simultaneously – operators would previously have had to walk from unit to unit and press a button to position cylinders individually – which saves perhaps 20 seconds per unit. Additionally, a new clamping and positioning system means that plates no longer need to be pre-bent – also saving some pre-press time. Lastly, Mitsubishi has improved its simultaneous, fully automatic plate change, which at 75 seconds irrespective of the number of units on the press, the company reckons is the fastest in the industry.

Design overhaul
There are also a number of small improvements in the design of the V3000 that help make it easier to operate. A liberal sprinkling of touch-sensitive screens, über-commanded by one central screen, control the press – so there’s less walking around to do. The water pans for the automated wash-up system have been made easier to remove. And the grippers’ coiled-spring mechanism has been replaced by something called a ‘taut bar’ which, coupled with a tweak in the design of the plate and impression cylinders, makes them much easier to adjust. And last, but definitely not least, the hopelessly old-fashioned chocolate and cream livery has been replaced by a steely industrial grey, and the press shape has been overhauled too: the panels and housings are now made from a super-plastic zinc compound, which has allowed the Japanese designers to deliver plenty of rounded, easily-cleaned corners.

The Diamond V3000 is Mitsubishi’s first new sheetfed press in seven years, and will replace the old Diamond 3000, which has been available since Drupa 2000 (its production speed of 13,000sph was world-beating at the time, but has since come to look dated). The UK market is already eager to know more about its successor, says Doliwa: “Times are hard for sheetfed printers – they want every five minutes of advantage they can get and this press offers them a lot of five minutes.”

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SPECIFICATIONS
Max sheet size 750x1,050mm
Min sheet size 540x360mm
Stock thickness range
Standard model 0.04-0.6mm
LX packaging model 0.04–1mm
Max speed 16,000sph
Max number of units 16
Price
Five-colour with coater with simultaneous plate change: £900,000;
Six-colour LX model with coater: £1.1-£1.2m
Contact
Mitsubishi Lithographic Presses UK 0113 240 7584 www.mitsubishipresses.co.uk

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THE ALTERNATIVES
Heidelberg Speedmaster SM 102
Heidelberg’s sheetfed B1 press looks slightly long in the tooth at the side of the Mitsubishi. It has a smaller sheet size than the V3000, and a much slower speed, but the commercial version can handle a thicker sheet. It has two plate change systems, a semi-auto and an automatic, but there’s a full range of pre-sets.
Max sheet size 720x1,020mm
Min sheet size 420x280mm
Stock thickness range
Standard model 0.04– 0.8mm
LX packaging model 0.1 – 1mm
Max speed 13,000sph
Max number of units 12
Price
Four-colour, no coater: from £464,000
Contact Heidelberg UK 020 8490 3500 www.heidelberg.com

KBA Rapida 105
The 105 is a newly modernised model, with a fast sheet speed and the potential for a super-long perfector configu­ration. It has a choice of two plate change systems, a semi-automatic and a fully automatic, but maintenance is standard.
Max sheet size 740x1,050mm
Min sheet size 340x480mm
Stock thickness range 0.08–1.2mm
Max speed 18,000sph
Max number of units 16
Price Five-colour with coater: from £1m
Contact KBA UK 01923 819922 www.kba-print.co.uk

Komori Lithrone S40
The current Lithrone is a mid-speed machine with plenty of automation. A new automatic plate change has cut change times down to less than two minutes. It has a separate perfecting model and like the Rapida, the standard model has skeleton transfer cylinders so can handle packaging print.
Max sheet size 720x1,030mm
Min sheet size 360x520mm
Stock thickness range max 1mm
Max speed 16,000sph
Max number of units 12
Price Five-colour with coater: from £750,000
Contact Komori UK 0113 279 9900 www.komori.com

MAN Roland 700
MAN Roland has also looked to minimise downtime in the design of the R700, and the result is a number of innovations including a special ink-repelling surface for the ink fountains for quick cleaning and quick changes of air and coating settings.
Max sheet size 780x1,040mm
Min sheet size 340x380mm
Stock thickness range max 1mm
Max speed 17,000sph
Max number of units 16
Price Six-colour: from £1.1m
Contact MAN Roland GB 020 8648 7090 www.weareprint.co.uk