Fresh from a second round of impressive profit figures MAN Roland (now manroland) will show a host of new developments at drupa, on and off press.
ONCE again under the motto We Are Print, MAN Roland, the world's second-largest press manufacturer and global market leader in web offset presses, will be in hall 6 at drupa 2008. The major themes are to be Value Added Printing on sheetfed presses, Applied Innovations on web presses, Printvalue for everything concerning services, pressroom products, networking, consultancy, and, last but not least, energy efficiency for sustainability of natural resources which is so important.
John Hansen, at MAN Ferrostaal (Roland's supplier in Australia) says, "MAN Roland is in the vanguard of the global print industry, of that there is no doubt. Its constant stream of innovation is designed to ensure printers are able to maximise their output and stay ahead of the needs of their customers. Visitors to drupa will see the full gamut of Roland printing systems, which will deliver real value to printers.”
The new MAN Roland presentation
The MAN Roland presentation at drupa will be in hall 6 once again, this is the PrintCity hall, where the company will have its own stand, and wil present in co-operation with many of its PrintCity partners. On 4,000 square meters, all business units are to be presented in a more concentrated, focused, and attractive manner than ever before.
The new stand concept is characterised by a lot of space for presentations and discussions.
Value Added Printing stands for higher production efficiency and product value. For commercial, publications and packaging printers, this means sophisticated applications and intelligent automation solutions for sheetfed and web presses. In the past, short and very short runs meant that press makeready time exceeded actual printing time, despite the considerable progress made in automation.
However the ultimate goal for success is to spend more time printing and less time making ready. The new Roland 700 DirectDrive is aimed directly at printing companies with most run lengths below 5,000 sheets and for whom ten jobs per shift is not the exception. Plate cylinder direct drive permits different makeready tasks that before had to be carried out in succession to be performed simultaneously. This has a dramatic effect on makeready times, with first users reporting that productivity is increased by up to 35 per cent.
Then there are the QuickChange modules for the Roland 700 Direct-Drive and Roland 700 HiPrint which provide dramatic savings in makeready time and far fewer waste sheets as a result. QuickChange Job is for rapid job and substrate change-over; QuickChange Color saves time and costs through highly-precise ink slide settings, a Triple-Flow inking unit, and modified engagement sequences; QuickChange Coating is for switching quickly from one type of coating to another; and QuickChange Clamp provides rapid coating form change-over.
New plus formats for sheetfed
Another drupa innovation from the press giant is to be oversize presses. In B2 small format Roland 500 presses this is called 0B plus (590 x 740mm) and for medium format R700 presses 3B plus (780 x 1,040mm) and in many cases this adds up to one more row of multiple-up images on a sheet which means higher capacity with the same amount of time and labour. The same goes for large format presses the Roland 900, XXL, in the 7B plus format. Here the 1,260 x 1,620mm sheet size permits 48 DIN A4 images on a sheet.
XXL Perfecting: Drupa will see many developments in large format presses, with the highlight the Roland 900, XXL in perfecting mode in all formats (7B, 7B plus and 8). For printing companies willing to develop new market opportunities this new perfector opens excellent perspectives. The simultaneous perfecting lets them profit from remarkably reduced job times and simplified production processes.
Enhancement par excellence
With numerous inline modules, the Roland 700 HiPrint offers the best prerequisites for high quality printing. One, two or even more coating modules with the Ultima variant for instance provide the basis for a wide variety of inline enhancement with dispersion and/or UV coatings. The Roland InlineFoiler Prindor produces with cold foil transfer in a quality previously only possible with hot foil stamping but without the hot system-inherent disadvantages (high temperatures that have an adverse effect on the substrate). Four-color overprinting of the foil creates the ultimate iridescent metallic effects. The Roland ColorPilot color control system and the Roland InlineInspector monitor the printing process to fully ensure consistently high quality.
Applied Innovations on web presses
Higher quality with low unit costs is what print buyers are demanding. Roland has identified that solutions for production cost management through new technologies, automation and networking are what are needed. Applied Innovations is the keyword for web presses and stands for continual goal-oriented innovations and groundbreaking optimisation. These innovations however are confined to developments that provide real practical benefits for the user. The best example of this is the APL fully-automated and robotised plate changing system which is available for all newspaper presses.
It reduces plate changing time to a fraction of what was previously needed. With a double-circumference press like the Colorman, plate changing takes only 2.5 minutes - for the entire press. In addition, image data-oriented control systems make a big contribution to standardised processes, shorter makeready times and less paper waste.
Cut-off register control has already proven its worth in practice for a long time and other similar developments are planned, such as image data measurement for colour and register control, web edge control, and ink density control. QuickStart is an important feature that automates press acceleration and can reduce start-up waste from several hundred copies to less than one hundred.
Efficient large web formats
Lower unit costs from the same resource base is also a demand placed on web presses. The new range of XXL formats - wider webs and larger formats - meet this demand. The format XXL Colorman has been producing successfully for some years already and with 24 instead of 16 newspaper pages and a maximum web width of 2,211mm reduces costs by up to 20 per cent compared to a 16-page press thanks to its compact, space-saving design and much lower maintenance requirements. A world premiere was celebrated recently as the first 80-page Lithoman successfully started up at Druckhaus Fink in Germany.
This is a new performance class: 2,250mm web width, 1,240mm cylinder circumference, and a maximum output of 3.2 million four-color DIN A4 pages per hour. This configuration with four double printing units and two system 2:5:5 folders provides the highest production variety. In the DIN A4 size this includes, besides 80-page production, 2 x 40, 4 x 20, 8 x 10, 6 x 12, 4 x 16 or 2 x 32 pages. The 80-page Lithoman opens up new potential for consistently high print quality, lower waste rates and high productivity.
Printvalue for Added Value
Printvalue is a new press support strategy from MAN Roland, which was the original digital pres smanagement pioneer when it launched its Pecom way back in 1990.
Printvalue is made up of four brands and services: printservices for support during the entire life cycle of a printing system, printcom for pressroom products, printnet for printing plant networking, and printadvice for consultancy services.
PrintServices stands for service and support that guarantees total customer care for the entire life cycle of printing systems. PrintServices covers process analysis, financing, project management, training, upgrades and store. For the customer this means individual consulting, concepts and planning for complete printing solutions, customised financing models for greater security, professional project execution through integrated project management, total support with system integration, fast reaction times for maximum press availability and high quality, safeguarding competitiveness through customized service and upgrade packages, and a service network with TeleSupport and TelePresence.
PrintCom stands for print competence and serves as a seal of quality for MAN Roland's range of pressroom products provided by best-in-class partners that are optimally matched to each application, production environment and printing system. The printcom product areas include blankets, washing agents, damping solutions, printing aids, silicones, coatings and inks, wash-up brushes, printing rollers, anilox rollers, lubricants and measuring instruments. printcom offers many advantages: faster commissioning, print process security, top print quality, higher press availability, minimised organisation times, lower production costs, and also lower warehousing costs through coordinated and need-related logistics.
PrintNet networks print production processes into a complete workflow starting with data acceptance and continuing right through costing, DTP, prepress, printing and finishing. PrintNet covers the following areas: planning, editorial, advertisements, prepress, press and finishing. printnet provides users with greater production flexibility by linking different locations and branch offices, as well as more transparency and efficiency through central datakeeping, control and networking. Furthermore, it increases quality along the entire value adding chain, provides compatibility, and is user-friendly (JDF, XML, Web Interfaces). The modular system structure permits future expansion and the possibility to integrate existing systems safeguards the investment.
PrintAdvice is the new brand that unites advisory services for both sheetfed and web press customers: investment guidance, building planning, organization, management, system configuration and process optimization. printadvice provides customers with bundled consultancy competence and they benefit from MAN Roland's many decades of experience in all aspects of printing. With this differentiated and comprehensive range of advisory services, printadvice is aimed at further strengthening customers' compe-titiveness. printadvice identifies the potential of printing companies and sup-ports them in their strategic planning. Many of these services and tasks have already been provided by MAN Roland's subsidiary company Eurografica
One of the highlights of drupa is always the MAN Roland stand, and this year's show will be no exception, it should certainly be one of the first ports of call for all printers looking to stay ahead of the pack.
