KBA Books Further Order for 16pp 'Makeready Queen'
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French printer signs up for new C16 commercial web offset press
Since being dubbed the 'makeready queen of 16pp presses' at an open house for trade representatives last November at prominent German magazine printer and first-time user LN Schaffrath in Geldern, Koenig & Bauer's new C16 has strutted its stuff for a string of European and overseas printers at the plant near the Dutch border. All have been seriously impressed not just by its exceptionally short makeready times but also by its print quality, output, reliability and ease of operation. The C16's compelling performance - it is engineered specifically to address the current shift in the price-competitive commercial market towards shorter print runs and faster turnaround - is now bearing fruit. Following a contract from Niederösterreichisches Pressehaus (NÖP) in St. Pölten, Austria, a KBA C16 has been snapped up by prominent French print enterprise Corlet Roto in Ambrières-Les-Vallées.
While Corlet Roto is primarily a litho operation, its web press plant in Ambrières-les-Vallées did install a Compacta 215 ten years ago. The new C16 will replace another make of press.
Intelligent software save time and money
The 65,000iph KBA C16 boasts a high level of automation that includes simultaneous plate changing on all units in under sixty seconds, and a KBA LogoTronic production management system with integrated EasyTronic standardised, time- and waste-saving start-up and run-down virtually at the touch of a button. A simple change of signature generally takes just three minutes from the last saleable copy of the previous run to the first of the new run. A change of signature and paper (grammage and web width) takes around five minutes. Speeds like this were previously unthinkable on a commercial press. Waste is reduced accordingly, to just a few hundred copies. This is a big boon for multiple short-run jobs.
As many as 50 jobs a day
Experienced observers are frequently surprised at the ease with which the new 16pp press handles 40 to 50 jobs a day, some entailing fewer than 10,000 copies and previously the purview of sheetfed. Even when printing such short runs the C16 can accelerate fast from the deliberately low makeready speed of 6,000iph up to its rated maximum with no manual intervention. "I can't describe it, you have to see it for yourself," commented one enthusiast trade visitor to the plant in Geldern.
