drupa Day 4: Short Run Folding Cartons

Our last day at drupa ended up being full of promising packaging solutions, much more than we expected and we wished we could have extended our stay another few days. On the “here and now” front we had fascinating conversations with Flexo press maker Gallus in Hall 2. They give a first class presentation/demonstration of their ICS 670 press featuring inline foil, gravure, embossing, inspection and die cutting. In a 20 minute presentation they printed 3 jobs with different inks and images. Mike Pfaff of Gallus shared with us the increased interest he is seeing by carton printers who are looking to take process and makeready steps out of their carton manufacturing process. The carton samples from the demo run used High Quality Flexo. Click here to watch the machine in action here.

On the offset side we stopped by the Presstek booth in Hall 4 and saw the 75 DI, an offset press which straddles the digital/analog fence. The 75 DI images offset plates on-press, and can change over in just a few minutes. It is designed to be efficient for jobs of 500 to 20,000 impressions. Mark Sullivan, Group Product Director for Presstek told me they are seeing an increase in interest in this press by Folding Carton printers looking for short run carton relief.

Optimizing Folding Carton printing and finishing operations is also the goal of development efforts by the analog press and finishing systems manufacturers as well. Heidelberg, Komori, Mitsubishi, KBA, manroland Sheetfed, and Bobst all showed fast change over presses and finishing solutions that address the needs of the industry as they understand them for short run and plant efficiency.

Also showing short run digital solutions in the carton space, Xeikon in Hall 8a, continues to forge ahead with Folding Carton innovations with its 3000 series digital dry toner press. Increasing its product offering in packaging, Xeikon is also showing its ThermoFlexX line of flexo plate imagers.