Offset Printing
Successful KBA Rapidas: No stopping the large-format and super jumbo presses
Thursday 17. April 2008 - Applications range from commercial to packaging to book work to poster printing
KBA North America, a global press manufacturer based in Williston, Vermont, announces its continued strong growth in the large- and super-large sheetfed press market. “The superior competence and market leadership of KBA in the large-format sector have been undisputed for decades,” says Holger Garbrecht, president and CEO of KBA North America, “and since Drupa 2004 have been extended even further to embrace the breathtaking dimensions of the super-large or XXL-plus format.”
Why has KBA remained such a dominant leader in the large-format and extra-large-format sheetfed press market? “Our company has been manufacturing large-format presses for over 80 years and has continued to have the substantially largest share of presses sold in this niche,” explains Garbrecht. “Over the years, we have introduced the newest technology on these presses to allow any type of printer to easily use this large format sizefrom 51 inches all the way up to 81 inches. Our Rapida 205 81-inch press, the largest in the world, received the prestigious PIA/GATF InterTech award for the entire press.. We are the only press manufacturer to offer a large-format press as a perfector, providing even more flexibility and productivity in this type of press. Plus, our large-format presses set printers apart because they can print on a variety of substratesfrom 40 lb paper to 48 pt board and even higher with special configurations. We are the only press manufacturer in the U.S. to have a working large-format press in our demo facility; potential customers can come see and try out the Rapida 142 56-inch six-color plus coater. While other press manufacturers may be only entering this field now, we have the knowledge, engineering, awards, and satisfied customers to back up our claim as the leader in large-format printing.”
Dramatic efficiency gains
Commercial printers are drawn to the large format size because a large-format sheet can accommodate 32, 48 or even 64 pages, as opposed to just 16 on a 41-inch sheet. Packaging printers are also exploiting the dramatic efficiency gains that large format can deliver: depending on the size of the packaging, where three blanks would fit on a 41-inch sheet, a Rapida 142 or Rapida 162 can print as many as eight. As an added bonus, LF printers can offer their customers the added-value benefit of single-source production, i.e. of commercials or packaging plus associated posters or displays.
The first super large-format Rapida 205 81-inch press was installed at German poster printers Ellerhold, just a stone’s throw from the KBA manufacturing facility in Radebeul, and was officially unveiled to the trade public there in March 2004. In the meantime, presses of the Rapida 205 and the slightly smaller Rapida 185 series totaling almost 300 printing units have been taken into production in Europe and North America. The first super large-format press in Asia was recently delivered to Shanghai, and there are some users who are already the proud owners of two or even three XXXL presses. For example, Edison Litho in North Bergen, NJ is the first printer in the US to own two Rapida 205 81-inch presses in their facility.
In the markets for the largest sheetfed offset formats, business can certainly be said to be thriving. More and more poster and display printers are installing the giant Rapida presses alongside wide-format inkjet installations or screen printing systems. Screen printers, in particular, have discovered the enormous productivity and profitability benefits embodied in super-large-format sheetfed offset. After all, despite the recognized strengths of the screen printing process, the technology is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain its market share in the face of ever-shorter delivery deadlines and mounting price pressures. It is only a question of time before six and a half foot offset presses achieve a real breakthrough in packaging printing. The only element still missing is the correspondingly modern equipment for finishing and conversion. In the somewhat more down-to-earth and less quality-critical corrugated board industry, there are already plenty of flexo presses with inline rotary die cutting for sheet widths of three meters, so what stands in the way of two-meter offset presses for folding cartons in the near future? Looking at the giant Rapidas, one certainly sees no obstacles in terms of print quality and press performance.
Although the first presses were mainly four or five-color configurations with or without additional perforating, coating or drying towers for poster printing, the demand is shifting increasingly in the direction of six or even seven-color installations with full inline coating and drying facilities for large-format posters and displays, especially in the USA. Even UV, hybrid finishing and plastic substrates have long since become regular considerations for super large format users. In fact, twelve super large-format Rapidas with equipment for UV and hybrid printing have been supplied to customers in the USA, Canada, Great Britain, France, Spain and Germany. One of the principal reasons: more and more retailers and brand-name manufacturers are demanding high-quality varnish finishing even for such large displays and posters as they seek to maximize their advertising success at the point of sale. A second reason: There is no need to wait before further processing in the case of UV products, and the slogan “Time is money” is equally valid in the super large-format sector, where billboard printers even promise a 24-hour service between receipt of an order and the finished posters hanging on the streets.
World’s largest super-Rapida in production in Tennessee
The strongest markets for super large-format sheetfed offset have so far been the USA and Great Britain, closely followed by Germany (superlarge-format pioneer Ellerhold, headquartered in Radebeul, has in the meantime bought three presses) and, after a somewhat wider gap, France, Spain and Switzerland. The largest press in the world to date – 30 metres long, 3.7 m high and weighing in at a mighty 272 tons – is a seven-color version with coating and drying towers installed at National Posters, the flagship company of the National Print Group, Inc. in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
The Rapida 205 is not only big in size, it is big in performance. It can take up to 20 trucks just to deliver the press to the installation site, and once it is up and running, its feeder pile alone can weigh more than three tons! Boosting sheet format to an enormous 59 x 81 inches, the press incorporates all the key benefits of the practice-proven Rapida 162, such as the 7 oclock cylinder arrangement, double-size impression cylinders, a shaftless feeder, and fully automatic plate changing. With its printing speed of up to 9,000 sph, the maximum production output can be calculated at over 92 ft² printed area per hour, corresponding to more than double the output of a high-performance medium-format press of the latest 18,000 sph generation. The relatively short inking train of the Rapida 205, with just 16 rollers, guarantees minimum start-up waste, short washing times, and unrivaled fast reactions, all of which are decisive factors when the majority of business is extremely short runs. An excellent substrate flexibility, permitting the handling of papers, display board, microflute, plastic film, and metallized stocks in thicknesses from 0.1 mm to 1.6 mm, rounds off the list of benefits.