Finishing & Screen Printing
New Cross Cutter Opens Huge Opportunities for Autobond Laminators
Monday 06. December 2010 - The Derbyshire factory of UK laminator manufacturer Autobond continues to be a hotbed of research and development and the latest product off the shop floor is the CC 105 cross cutter, which can be used with any make of laminator or encapsulator. To prove the point, the first machine to be built is due to arrive during December at a printer in Canada, which is fitting its stand-alone CC 105 behind a Billhofer laminator.
The second CC 105 to leave Autobond’s factory is to be shipped to Australia as part of a Mini 105 THS laminator line, which has been purchased by a packaging printer in Melbourne. An order has also been received for the CC 105 from another Austrian printer, plus two further orders from printers in California and Illinois.
“The cutting blade on the new CC 105 can cut material as thick as 500 microns,” says managing director John Gilmore. “During lamination the grip edge of each sheet is under-lapped by 3 mm. The extremely accurate laser sensor detects the double thickness of the 3 mm under-lap, stopping the web ‘on a dime’, and the servo-driven flying knife cuts through the film.
“A festoon system enables the laminator to continue running and this means we can achieve speeds on an Autobond Mini with a cross cutter of 60 metres per minute. On a Mini 105, you could produce 5,000 B1 landscape sheets an hour, which could be delivered automatically into a speed-adjustable shingle table or straight into a vibrating jogger or stacker, ready for the next process.
“The potential to use Autobond technology beyond the traditional concept of putting a film over printed stock in order to improve its appearance and durability grows constantly. Take a job such as the packaging of smoked salmon. This is produced on a phenomenal scale around the world and invariably consists of the salmon being shown against a board that is gold one side and silver on the reverse. An Autobond Mini could apply gold and silver film in one pass, which would be significantly less expensive for the printer than buying metallised board.
“We could take this to another level and incorporate into an Autobond laminator a facility that would allow board to be fed from a roll and cut into sheet form by the CC 105. A high percentage of the board used in everyday packaging is between 250 – 650 gsm,” says John Gilmore. “A packaging printer wanting to print on top of silver or gold board within this weight range, to produce a product such as toothpaste cartons, would be able to reduce their material costs significantly by investing in this technology.”
The CC 105 uses an arrowhead blade to cut the film and this blade can cut polypropylene, nylon, and polyester where sheets have been under-lapped. The blade can be changed within a couple of minutes for a circular cutting disc, which enables the separation of thick polyester encapsulation film or reel fed board.
The servo-driven cross cutter is fitted with a second servo motor that pulls in the web with great accuracy even at fast speeds. The high degree of automation makes the CC 105 easy to use and it can be programmed to make a double cut for flush cut work. The festoon rollers ensure that the web is maintained at a constant tension throughout production.