Offset Printing
Global Print Specialist Motivating Graphics Expands Reach with New KBA Rapida 162 64″ Six-Color Press
Wednesday 08. December 2010 - Ft. Worth, Texas hub taps greater automation, flexibility, and efficiency in large format
KBA North America, a global press manufacturer based in Dallas, Texas, announces that Motivating Graphics, a global printing company based in Ft. Worth, Texas, is preparing for the start-up of its new KBA Rapida 162 64-inch six-color press in mid-December 2010. It will be the third KBA press for the large sheetfed and web firm that provides packaging and printing for the high-tech telecommunications market in North America, South America, Central America, China, and Europe.
“We’re very excited to be adding this new KBA press to our line-up,” says Ray Glenn Clark, president of Motivating Graphics. “It will increase our platform of automated technology allowing us greater flexibility, shorter turnaround, less waste, and additional efficiency to continue to serve our customers at the high level that they are accustomed. We also believe that it will help to grow our business into new markets.”
Clark especially noted the array of new technology featured on the Rapida 162 that will benefit his company and his customers. “My sons and I saw the new KBA Qualitronic color control system in action at Drupa 2008 and were very impressed with its capabilities,” he says. “We recognized it as a major advancement in inline quality control and see it as being an operator-friendly system for our press team. We’re eager to have it featured on our new press along with all the rest of KBA’s unique highly-automated technology.”
Introduced at Drupa 2008, KBA’s Qualitronic is a camera-based inline sheet-inspection color control system that scans each sheet as it enters the delivery or the perfecting unit, and compares it with a reference sheet. The scanner on the Densitronic system’s measuring arm scans the sheets at a resolution of 330 dpi and compares them with the original PDF. The software allows even minimal deviations to be detected and automatically recorded in the quality log. Using the on-the-fly inline KBA Qualitronic Color Control automation module, the reference density is attained much faster and maintained throughout the entire print run, cutting waste and makeready time. Density values for each scanned sheet are passed automatically to the ink-key controls, which calculate the changes that must be made based on the differences between the reference value and the actual value for each individual key in each printing unit.
While Motivating Graphics currently offers an even balance between both sheetfed and web press printing, Clark sees an increased shift toward more sheetfed work in the future. “For our company, the sheetfed and packaging market are the place to be,” he says. “Our operator manuals and guides can be easily printed on our sheetfed presses and the automation on our new sheetfeds provides us with the flexibility to print our packaging work as well as conventional printing.”
Another important component for Motivating’s success is its environmental stance. The firm is dedicated to monitoring production activities using key business decisions, sound practices, established objectives and meeting goals to eliminate its internal and external environment impact and pollution while implementing and maintaining a documented environmental management policy. “During the past several years, we’ve seen our customers employ aggressive design styles for their packaging to promote themselves within new markets,” says Clark. “They are looking at a variety of substrates and asking for environmentally-friendly options. We’re providing a value-added service by offering an environmentally-friendly print method. Our new Rapida 162 will allow us to reduce or eliminate more waste, produce our products even faster, and use less makeready—all of which helps our environment. It’s a stance that is important to our customers as well as to our firm.”
The new KBA Rapida 162 joins two additional KBA presses: a five-year-old Rapida 105 41-inch sheetfed press and a five-month-old Rapida 142 56-inch eight-color sheetfed press along with two web offset presses.
Clark and his management team have positioned the firm to take advantage of the current economy and capture new business in the future. Motivating operates three facilities in Central and South America: two plants in Reynosa and Guadalajara, Mexico; and a facility in Brazil. “Our offshore printing business has been strong,” he says, “while the U.S. market for the past two years has been soft. But we’re seeing a slow gradual pick-up within the U.S. market and we’re very well positioned. Our new KBA Rapida 162 64-inch press is a necessity for us.”
Motivating Graphics was established in 1976 in Florida by Ray Clark Sr. where it offered traditional printing, litho-laminate corrugated boxes, CD replication, kitting, and packaging. Three generations of the Clark family have guided the firm for more than 30 years with the most technologically-advanced equipment and facilities in the printing industry. In 1996, the firm was turned over to Ray Glenn Clark Jr., who is now joined by his two sons, Chris and Tim, as executive vice presidents. Today the firm is headquartered in Ft. Worth, Texas with print facilities in Guadalajara, Mexico; Reynosa, Mexico; and Brazil. It has grown to over 900 employees globally and has customers in Central and South America, China, and Europe.