Finishing & Screen Printing
Off to the Drupa 2008 with innovative finishing solutions
Monday 26. May 2008 - Hugo Beck has made a name for itself as a leading manufacturer of film packaging machines and packaging lines. But its machines for print further processing have in the meantime grown to become an equally important business division.
The solutions that the machine builders have for the printing industry are to be presented by the specialists from Dettingen near Stuttgart at the Drupa 2008. “Although we are only one of a record breaking 1800 exhibitors and not even the largest -in the area of finishing, we are one of the most innovative”, promises managing director Horst Heimann.
Bigger, faster, better, cheaper – at the Drupa 2008, the largest international meeting of the industry, the superlatives dominate. No wonder that exhibitors from all over the world want to make the best impression with their products and services for the printing and paper industry on an area covering 170,000 square meters. The superlative that Hugo Beck is contributing for the expected 400,000 professional attendees is “better finish”. There was a time when a printing product stood alone as a value by itself. Today, product samples, CDs, folders and lottery postcards are a natural part of catalogues, magazines and newspapers. However, these first become bettered finished if inserts are attached neatly, well protected and perfectly presented. Hugo Beck has the technology for this kind of finishing. “We see ourselves as a competent problem solver for further processing printed materials, because we create added value for printed products to increase their acceptance”, Heimann said. Although the additional benefit is paramount, the Swabian machine builders also keep an eye on the marginal costs. In order to keep these under control, Hugo Beck has been successful with technical innovations such as the conversion to single servo-drives many years ago or currently with an intelligent mailing system and the new machine generation neo X.
Hugo Beck will be showing its most recent development at the Drupa, the film packaging machine neo X in combination with the inserting machine ESM 15. This is usually used in combination with adhesive binders or collecting album machines. It can process up to 15,000 magazines per hour, insert advertising supplements, do corner conversions, glue address labels and de-stack. Only the push of a button is necessary in order to change the plant over to the newly developed newspaper feeder ZA 450 from Hugo Beck, which dispenses daily newspapers, inserts advertising supplements and conveys the complete product into the neo X where it is packed in film. Apart from the precision, the speed and the flexibility of the plant are remarkable – time-consuming re-fitting or long downtimes are not necessary. “We want to show that the added value we create does not cost more money and time to the same extent”, Heimann says. Orientation to the needs and wishes of the customers – this is the finishing specialist’s priority in all respects. In this way, the new machine generation neo X has been developed from market needs, and is thus based on intensive customer surveys. The result was a long wish list with three main points of interest: the users wanted better ergonomics, simpler maintenance and adjustment possibilities with the machine running. Neo X fulfils these requirements with a slimmer machine corpus, which improves access to all moving parts, and a tilting machine hood. In addition, side welding has been automated in order to enable fine adjustments during operation of the machine. Maintenance and service of the machine are fast and simple thanks to a tilting waste winding system, tilting switchgear cabinet and fixation of the machine trim with locking bolts instead of screws. Apart from this, the engineers decentralized the controls of the neo X. This allows machine operators to accomplish safe slow running, also with the hood opened. The customer has the assurance of getting tested modules which are also easy to exchange, because the controls are produced as complete function groups in-house and are then assembled using a plug-and-play technique.
A second innovation in the field of print further processing is the mail line system, which (nearly) fulfills all customers requirements at once: Depending on the configuration, which is virtually arbitrary because of the plug-and-play technology used by Hugo Beck, the plant is able to compile, insert, glue-on and print. On the basis of the supplied customer data, it can compile and address individual catalogue mailings with exact target group product and service supplements fully automatically. More service and lower unit costs with the highest quality: Hugo Beck represents this philosophy – and not just at the Drupa 2008.