Day four of Heidelberg Innovation Week: All about automated packaging printing

During the fourth day of Heidelberg Innovation Week, the company presented its latest advancements in the field of packaging printing. Although packaging printing offers great potential, according to the company, its new user experience makes “packaging printing easier than ever – in all format classes”. 

In a video presentation, Paul Thompson, technical sales, post-press packaging, Heidelberg introduced the latest technologies that the company had to offer.

Stressing upon reducing touch points in the production workflow and printing processes, and minimising manual interference, Thompson claimed that these factors could subsequently increase overall performance of the press and double productivity. 

“Production optimisation for several print jobs with the same colours, materials or die-cutting tools is carried out in the Prinect Scheduler. This enables jobs to be placed automatically and in the correct sequence directly in the Speedmaster job queue without manual intervention,” Thompson said. “From summer 2021, we will take the next step. The Prinect's Buisness Manager will be extended specifically for packaging printing. The result will be a fully integrated packaging workflow.” 

He said the Prinect production manager and the customised packaging enhancements become the data centre of production.

“With over 50,000 printing units sold, the Speedmaster CD/CX presses are the most successful press series on the market and perfect for packaging printing,” he added.  

He explained that the Speedmaster CX 102 combines its flexibilty with navigated printing. 

“Innovative solutions from the peak performance class would transfer on now available XL and CX presses. The Speedmaster CX102 combines proven reliability with the new operating concept and is perfectly suited for packaging printing,” Thompson said. 

Further explaining the new automated features in the machines, Thompson said that the Wallscreen XL guides the operator through the individual processes. “With Intellistart 3, up to 50 upcoming job changes can be prepared on the press while production is underway. Intelliguide navigates the operator through the complete job change and always selects the fastest makeready process. The Intelliline visualises the process phase at the individual printing and coating units and indicates when and where a manual intervention is required,” he added. 

He also highlighted the Prinect Inpress Control 3 photospectometric inline colour and register measuring system, which switches the press automatically to "Good Sheet production" as soon as the defined quality parameters are met. “We lead the industry with Assistant Systems such as Colour Assistant Pro and Wash Assistant. Good Sheets production starts as quickly as possible thanks to the precise ink key presets and intelligent selection of the right wash programme. This reduces waste and repeat jobs and is also set up faster and more reliably. Artificial Intelligence analyses results and makes continuous improvements,” he concluded.