Last week, a delegation from South Korea joined packaging printers from Great Britain the KBA facility in Radebeul near Dresden to get information on the latest trends in the printing and finishing of packaging products.
The first of the print demonstrations presented by KBA head of sheetfed marketing Jurgen Veil took place on a six-colour Rapida 145 with inline coater. This large-format press printed at speeds of up to 17,000 sph with 250 and 600gsm substrates.
Highlights included a fast job changeover with simultaneous plate changing using DriveTronic SPC, and different coating effects based on the latest UV technology from KBA, which says the switch from a dispersion coating for the first job to matt-gloss special effects for the second was accomplished in next to no time, despite requiring also conversion from conventional to UV coating in the coater tower. It also featured non-stop pile changing at the feeder and delivery, in combination with fully automatic substrate logistics.
A six-colour Rapida 106 coater press with a raised foundation for increased pile heights printed at full press speed with a 350gsm GD2 board. A job using heavy display board with a thickness of almost 1 mm was printed at 13,000sph and finished with drip-off effect coating (oil-based overprint varnish through the last inking unit and gloss dispersion coating in the coater). The presentation showed fully automatic non-stop and logistics systems.
Guests also witnessed a six-colour Rapida 106 in a double-coating configuration with inline ColdFoiler unit. After simple dispersion coating, a five-colour folding carton for hair colouring was refined by adding a cold-foil finish. KBA says the special feature of this process is the optimisation of foil application by way of web splitting (division into several narrower ribbons, which can then be aligned precisely to the areas of the printed sheet requiring foil) and multiple foil use; the foil web runs through the impression gap several times, and thus minimises foil consumption by reducing the area which is left unused.
