V-Tab Reklambruket improves press productivity with Baldwin Tower Clean System
6/4/2007
V-Tab Reklambruket improves press productivity with Baldwin Tower Clean System
Swedish web offset house, Reklambruket, has significantly improved the performance of its eight-unit DGM press following the installation of Baldwin Litho Spray World dampening equipment and Tower Clean, an inexpensive automatic blanket cleaning system for single-width presses. In addition to increased print quality and productivity the new Baldwin facilities have enabled the factory in Jönköping to become more environmentally friendly, as production manager, Benny Möllerström, explains.
“Printers today have to look carefully at how they handle the waste produced in their plants but they also have to look forward at how new legislation might affect their business in the future,” says Mr Möllerström. “We previously had an integrated dampening and blanket cleaning system on the DGM press, but we were encountering problems with fount solution quality. Some of the blanket cleaning technologies we examined created contaminated waste water that would have to be disposed of via a specialist company. One of the huge advantages of the new Tower Clean system is that it uses the paper web to clean the blanket, which it does very effectively in less than two minutes. This normally uses around one hundred copies.”
The Tower Clean system consists of a solvent applicator per tower, brush units and pumping station. It enables the blanket to be cleaned by contact with the moving web once the small profile applicator has applied a low VOC solvent to the paper. As the web reaches the blanket the brush unit, which is frequently installed only on the first-down blanket, is activated. This removes lint and ink. In addition, the Tower Clean process has a positive cleaning effect on the guide rollers.
Tower Clean can easily be retrofitted to existing presses where web offset or newspaper printers are looking to eliminate manual blanket cleaning during production. The low investment cost, improved print quality and extended print cycle result in a short payback period, while the simplicity of Tower Clean insures a very low cost of ownership.
“When we cleaned the DGM by hand it took about one and a half hours and required several operators. We then installed a system that reduced the time required but gave us the problem of disposing of waste water. Baldwin’s Tower Clean system combines the best of all worlds, providing fast and effective automatic cleaning with little waste and no maintenance. The equipment was easily installed and has worked well since it was commissioned in March.
“We took delivery of the Litho Spray World dampening system, consisting of 64 spray bars, around the same time and this has also improved the print quality and productivity of the press considerably,” says Benny Möllerström. “The speed with which the operators can now make the press ready has reduced web waste by around two per cent but we are confident this will improve over the coming weeks as staff become more used to the system.”
Reklambruket prints for customers based throughout Sweden, Norway and Poland. Its DGM press is operated around the clock, producing a wide range of commercial work such as advertising literature, newsletters, brochures and promotional material. The company was founded in 1979 and employs 130 people at the Jönköping site.
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