Offset Printing
Premiere for the Genius 52UV and Universys in Romania
Wednesday 17. February 2010 - Romania's most famous printing house, Monitorul Oficial R.A., has put its money where its mouth is and is expanding its production facilities by adding two machines from KBA-Metronic, a subsidiary of the world's oldest printing press manufacturer, Koenig & Bauer (KBA). This makes Monitorul Oficial the first company in Romania to use a Genius 52UV and a Universys. The Genius 52UV printing press, designed for use with plastics and sensitive substrates in the 36 x 52 cm format, as well as the Universys personalization system for the individualising of cards in the ISO standard format (85.5 x 54 mm) have just started work in Bucharest. The company wants to expand its product portfolio sustainably towards plastic films and special printing substrates. Besides book covers, cards in particular are printed in a multiple image production process, and then personalized on the modular configured Universys machine.
The triumphal progress of the space-saving and environmentally friendly UV printing Genius 52UV thus continues unabated in Romania. More and more printers are now recognizing the benefits of the waterless Anilox short inking units. Any search for ink keys, as used in conventional printing presses with alcohol dampening units, will be in vain. Neither are they hid behind the striking operating display, which the printer can move along the machine for ergonomic operation. The sheet is correctly inked after only 10 start-up sheets. Printing is performed using plates that have been designed for this waterless printing process. A silicone layer on the plates ensures that only the ink-feeding image areas take up the UV-hardening ink. An Anilox ceramic roller with microscopically small ink cells guarantees a constant ink feed. This procedure also assures invariable inking results with repeat orders.
Chief engineer from Monitorul Oficial R.A is fascinated by this technology: “What caught our eye with this machine was the way it was able to master job changes in just a few minutes, and the fact that a finished, saleable result was possible after just a few start-up sheets. That spares us a lot of the waste that arises in conventional offset printing when adjusting the inks. Unlike our large-format machines, the Genius 52UV doesn’t need any isopropanol or powder. The inks dry immediately. No delays arise if, for example, the reverse of a printed document has itself to be printed on, or if freshly printed sheets have to be further processed. For one thing, the UV printing inks help us print on sensitive, non-absorbent materials, for another, they speed up the processes”.
The Monitorul Oficial printing company, which is equipped with the most modern printing machines, prints books, business stationery and commercial jobs, as well as the country’s highest circulation daily newspaper “The Official Journal”. “We will now be printing book covers on the Genius 52UV”, explained Chief engineer. “Our new investments mean that our customers will benefit increasingly from the use of specific substrates with metallized or extremely smooth or shiny surfaces, and even from plastic films such as PVC, polycarbonate, polystyrene, polyethylene, PET, and ABS. The varnishing unit makes both protective and spot coatings possible, as well as allowing matt and glossy effects on the printed sheets. We print very cost effectively with this machine – even with small print runs – because the amount of substrate wasted (which is often very expensive) is really small”, Chief engineer added.
The Universys is a modular personalization system, designed for the ISO format of 85.5 x 54 mm. Monitorul Oficial will be using it to personalize cards printed in multiple image production on the Genius 52UV, and then laminate and punch them in further process steps. The Universys will be used to mark the individual cards – for example with PIN numbers, letter fields or barcodes – using two inkjet print heads. The Universys can label the cards in the same run with a hot stamping unit, for instance, to prevent the pin codes on telephone cards from being seen by others. KBA-Metronic’s modular personalization system is also equipped with a magnetic stripe encoder, so that magnetic strips on the lower part of the card can be both written on and read. Inline printing can be performed in landscape or portrait orientation. A control camera monitors the printed data and compares it with the database. Both paper and plastic cards with thicknesses of 0.25 to 0.8 mm can be individualized.
The future operators of this new printing technology were able to get to know it during a week-long employee training course at KBA-Metronic’s experimental print shop in Veitshöchheim, Germany. Not only were the Genius 52UV and the Universys presented and explained by experienced KBA-Metronic instructors, but insights were also provided into the pre-press systems. The team was accompanied by the Technical Director of the Romanian KBA-Metronic sales partner Prosystem Print Utilaje Tipografice Srl. Prosystem represents KBA-Metronic printing systems in Romania and will also be providing technical services for the systems delivered to Monitorul Oficial.