Offset Printing
Colbert Packaging Slashes Turnaround Times with Seven-Color Mitsubishi Tandem Perfector
Wednesday 05. August 2009 - In its quest to satisfy the demand for high-caliber pharmaceutical and health-care packaging that contains increasing amounts of critical information for consumers, Colbert Packaging Corp. has added a seven-color Mitsubishi 3000TP Tandem Perfector. The 40-inch dedicated perfector, installed at the firm's headquarters facility in Lake Forest, Ill., is specially configured for folding carton applications.
“We needed the capability to print the front and reverse sides of heavy-caliper board in one pass,” explained Steve Sifrer, pressroom supervisor. “Conventional perfecting presses have a spotty record when it comes to printing packaging board. We also sheet our own stock, which can produce slight variations in sheet size that conventional perfectors tend not to handle well. Between the heavier stock and sheet size variations, the Tandem Perfector offered the best advantages in terms of print quality and production efficiency.”
Celebrating its 50th anniversary this year, Colbert Packaging specializes in folding cartons, rigid setup boxes, paperboard specialty products, pressure-sensitive roll labels and flexographic printing. The company consists of three manufacturing plants — two in Lake Forest, Ill., and one in Elkhart, Ind. — and a warehouse in South Bend, Ind., with combined space in excess of 300,000 square feet.
While delivering a quality product is paramount, the firm sought additional flexibility to ensure its customers fast turnarounds at a competitive price. The Tandem Perfector is the only dedicated perfector that can perfect carton stock in one pass. Colbert Packaging’s Tandem Perfector handles 0.008-inch to 0.032-inch board. It prints six colors on the front of the sheet and one color on the back.
“Being able to print both sides in one pass is obviously much more cost-effective,” Sifrer said. “The pricing advantage is huge.”
The Tandem Perfector maintains the same leading edge gripper throughout the length of the machine. Backside printed sheets are passed to the front-side printing units without flipping the sheets. The straight-line sheet transfer prevents marking and reduces fan-out.
Colbert Packaging utilizes ultraviolet energy-cured ink to print the reverse side of the sheet and conventional ink on the top side. An interstation UV dryer between the first printing unit and Mitsubishi’s patented three-cylinder transfer system, called the Translink unit, instantly dries the UV ink. A tower coater at the end of the press applies aqueous formulations to the front side.
“This arrangement has worked out fantastically,” Sifrer stated. “Because we are a folding carton manufacturer, we print, die cut and glue the sheets. Before we installed the Mitsubishi perfector, we would use conventional inks on the top and bottom sides but then apply an aqueous coating to protect the ink on the backside to avoid marking on our gluers. Now the UV ink sets up dry, and there is no scuffing or rubbing when the sheet runs through the gluer.”
The Tandem Perfector, which replaced a much older press, integrated well into Colbert Packaging’s operation. It shares the pressroom floor with a six-color Mitsubishi 3FC carton press acquired in 2000.
“That first press was a great purchase for us,” Sifrer said. “It still performs outstandingly. We have considerable confidence in the company as well. The Mitsubishi headquarters is nearby in Lincolnshire, Ill., and we can arrange repair service within a couple hours or pick up parts from their service department ourselves.”
Scheduling jobs is easier thanks to the interchangeability of the Mitsubishi presses, according to Sifrer.
“We can switch from the Tandem Perfector to the 3FC at the last minute,” he explained. “The same set of plates will work on either press. In pharmaceutical packaging, you always have knockout areas on the coating blanket. If we need to change presses, we don’t need to produce a separate blanket.”
In production for approximately four months, the Tandem Perfector already has opened up doors to new business opportunities for Colbert Packaging.
“Our options were to stay with a straight carton press and continue to run jobs twice through the press, experiment with a perfector that had a sheet-reversing unit or go with the Tandem Perfector,” Sifrer said. “Considering the uniqueness of the Tandem Perfector, it seemed like a no-brainer.”