Consumables
PrintSTAR brings enhanced quality in packaging film printing
Thursday 14. April 2022 - Gimprim, a division of the GRANGER Group, runs one of the largest print shops for flexible packaging in France. They chose PrintSTAR, the 100% inspection system from ISRA VISION, to mitigate quality issues in their printing and prevent customer complaints.
100 % inline inspection in one of Frances largest print shops
With seven 8-to-10-color flexo lines offering a scalable capacity of up to 600 million linear meters per year, Gimprim prints flexible packaging for large customers. Its product range extends from shrink films for the beverage and canning industry, packaging films for pulp producers (kitchen/toilet paper rolls), and films for FFS sacks made from PPE to breathable and standard films for hygiene products.
High-quality packaging provides both a key marketing message and a purchase incentive at the point of sale, often making it crucial to purchasing decisions, especially for first-time customers. The quality – suggested by its appearance and the expectations it raises at the consumer – has a direct impact on how well a product sells. Defects in the printed image on the packaging, such as ink splashes or gaps, are not acceptable and should never make it as far as the retailer. They suggest that the product is of poor quality, damaging the brand perception and ultimately affecting sales. That is why standards for packaging print quality are so high today.
Improved product quality
As the previous inspection solutions no longer met the print shops quality requirements, Gimprim has chosen a new system. The company was already very satisfied with ISRA VISION SMASH for unprinted plastic films and nonwovens.
Operating in another division, the 100% inspection systems been proven to be constantly reliable and very user-friendly since their successful trial phase in March 2014. The company was therefore keen to use another product from ISRA VISION.
To achieve sustainable and repeatable improvement in inspection performance and thus product quality, the PrintSTAR system for 100% web monitoring was chosen. PrintSTAR effectively complements the partial images made by matrix cameras from competing systems. Built around high-resolution line cameras, the system offers significant benefits in the inspection of continuous material, in particular, detecting even the tiniest defects missed by solutions that use matrix cameras. Combined with ultra-bright LED lighting, the 100% solution from ISRA VISION enables continuous quality and process monitoring of the printed image, lamination, and coating. PrintSTAR detects and classifies any emerging defects in real-time so that their causes can be rectified early.
Initial results in record time
The new inspection system was ready for operation and in productive use, one week after installation began. Since then, PrintSTAR has provided a guaranteed level of quality in numerous ways – which is especially clear in the reduced level of waste, the time and money saved by increasingly infrequent repeat production, and significantly fewer customer complaints.
High-performance defect detection and classification ensure that only relevant defects are reported. Furthermore, the system has particularly fine configuration capabilities. One of the first outcomes of the new system was the ability to identify recurring defects and implement tailored action plans to address them. 100% inspection allows the machine settings to be adapted in the best possible way, reducing the defect rate. The production analysis also proved to be useful when selecting the most suitable consumables for the printing presses themselves.