Pressroom
Colourstream completes pressroom revamp with XL 75 long perfector
Friday 19. June 2009 - Colourstream has this week taken delivery of a Speedmaster XL 75-10-P marking the complete re-equipment of its pressroom over the past 12 months.
Two SM 74-10-Ps have been replaced, last autumn with the UKs first Anicolor long perfector (a Speedmaster SM 52-10-P) and now with the
XL 75-10-P. Managing director John Greene says the XL 75 running with Inpress Control inline spectrophotometry will lift productivity by 40% over the previous technology.
In the next few weeks the company will also take delivery of the new Stahlfolder KH 82, Heidelbergs most automated combination folder to date. It was shown at Drupa and became available commercially this year.
“The XL 75 will allow us to increase productivity and quality and to be even more environmental with reduced start up waste and running with just 3% alcohol,” says Mr Greene.
He anticipates this press running an average of 5,000 sheets per job with a ten minute makeready, half that of the SM 74, and with no more than 250 waste sheets. With the larger impression cylinder the company can accommodate a wider range of stocks (and Colourstreams experience is that the variety of stock choices, particularly recycleds, is extending all the time) and have exceptional rolling power for top quality.
Inpress Control has been calibrated to the ISO 12647 printing standard and it will automatically adjust elements of the press to keep the colour within very fine tolerance throughout a run and from run to run. The company has previously run with Image Control but it sees the move to Inpress Control as a major advance.
The reduction in alcohol, halved from the SM 74 long perfectors, fits well with the companys green policy and follows neatly on from the installation last year of a Suprasetter 75 which runs with processless plates to eliminate waste chemistry. It outputs 32 plates an hour which, with the Anicolor averaging 1,000 sheets and going as low as 250 to compete with digital technology, means it is working flat out most of the time.
The company is also installing water-cooled peripherals and ink pumping systems from technotrans to improve the pressroom conditions and reduce energy and consumables waste.
The KH 82 folder replaces an older model and gives the company the set up and running speeds to match the XL 75 technology. The company is also taking a secondhand ST300 saddle-stitcher so that it has total front to back control of the job, enabling it to monitor quality carefully and meet the very rapid response required by todays market.
Colourstream is a £3.5m turnover company which handles a range of commercial work for print management companies and large corporate businesses, most of them buyers who want a professional and long term working relationship with a company willing to invest in its future.
The new press will run 16 hour days, five days a week.