Pressinspection.com ĺ The Printing Blog

Among our readers, of course, the vast majority of those who buy second-hand machines rather than new ones. Time is running fast, and today’s new machines will soon become second-hand machines. In just a few years, all the innovations that seem crazy today will soon become the order of the day.

I was fortunate enough to participate as an exhibitor with Heidelberg at DRUPA 2004, 2008, and without in 2012, 2016 and 2024. Actually, I have been observing the process of machine modification since the mid 90‘s, and with this post I would like to document the directions in which sheetfed offset printing machines are evolving in the early 20’s of the 21st century.

It is enough to look at the machines of thirty years ago to understand the global changes that have taken place in printing. Although the technology of offset printing itself has not changed much, the machines themselves have become smarter and have begun to replace the printer. Only a third of a century ago, the printer was a kind of artist – the result of the printed product depended on his skills. Now the machine itself, not the worker, is responsible for quality.

Sharing my impressions based on what I was able to see. I am no longer a product specialist, and if the Heidelberg specialists can correct me, I would be pleased.

What do potential users think about all this?

Everyone I spoke to at the exhibition was unanimous: in recent years, the selling price of printed products has not increased, which is not the case with the prices of new equipment. Today, most medium-sized print shops are not in a position to buy new equipment. Therefore, sheet-fed offset is likely to remain in the printing of high-speed work – packaging and labelling, while medium-sized businesses will be forced to buy used machines, or move into the niche of digital solutions.

This will inevitably lead to a reduction in the production of new machines, and consequently in five years’ time there will be far fewer printing machines on the aftermarket.

I suppose that our activity in helping to pick up used machines will be relevant for a very, very long time. We need to understand what used machines will look like in five years’ time. So a special thank you to my Heidelberg friends at DRUPA for the quality demonstration of their new products.

I want to warn you: not all company representatives were as kind as Heidelberg at DRUPA and took the time to show me their developments. Some (let’s not point fingers) did not see fit to find the time for short meeting. Therefore, inaccuracies are possible somewhere.

As early as 2016, with its autonomous printing concept, Heidelberg at DRUPA 2024 has been focusing on increasing Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE). In other words, the company aims to standardise the printing process and reduce the impact of the individual worker on the outcome of the printing process.

Offset printing technology itself has already reached its ceiling. There has been nothing new in the technology itself in the last thirty years, since the end of experiments with dry offset printing. The composition of inks has changed, they have become faster-drying. But the principle of separating the white space elements from the printing elements remains the same.

What should manufacturers do? How to increase productivity? There are only two answers: reduce register time and increase printing speed.

Heidelberg has introduced the concept of Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) to objectively evaluate the automation of equipment. Its potential lies in the Push to Stop concept. Today’s Heidelberg Speedmaster is without doubt the smartest and most automated version of the Speedmaster ever produced. The machine uses the new unified Heidelberg User Experience (UX) user interface. Most of the new Speedmaster features are available not only for the senior model in the XL range, but also for machines in the other small-format series.

Another new feature that has been around since 2020, but which was demonstrated for the first time at Drupa, is Intelliline. The vertical light indicators of this system are built into the lid of each print unit and can be seen from afar. If they shine blue – the machine is in production, green – an automatic order change is in progress, yellow – manual intervention is required.

The Push to Stop concept includes individual packages, each responsible for a different area. There is no need to remember all their names. But some of them are worth mentioning.

For example, the third version of the Intellistart 3 package is a specialised support system for efficient work preparation. This programme is able to automatically generate change orders depending on the type of paper, ink used, etc. The new Intellirun technology interacts with it, telling the operator the optimal sequence of actions when changing orders, taking into account the peculiarities of the planned job queue.

In combination with a Prinect colour measurement system (e.g. Prinect Inpress Control 3), the Color Assistant Pro software enables fully automatic and continuous optimisation of ink presetting on the Speedmaster. The software’s intelligent algorithm uses the measured values of the Prinect colour measuring system and corrects it fully automatically.

The condition of the CPC-foil in the ink box also influences the amount of ink to be fed. You will remember that in the Heidelberg machine with remote ink adjustment there is no steel ink knife in principle – since the 1980s, a special calibrated PVC foil has been used to protect both the ink segments and the ductor cylinder from wear. Now the foil wear is also compensated automatically, and the optimum foil change time is monitored and shown on the display.

Also implemented:

Air Assistant – autonomous process optimisation and automatic air setting. This is worth talking about in a little more detail. Characteristic curves for speed-dependent air adjustment have been used in Heidelberg Speedmaster machines since the introduction of CPTronic. They were preset at the factory, but the printer could change them via an interface. Now the machine has learnt to adjust the air supply to the material depending on the speed fully automatically. The factory-set air pre-feed values can be easily changed individually using the Air Assistant. According to the manufacturer, this can increase the machine’s productivity by up to five per cent.
Wash Assistant package allows the machine to automatically select the appropriate, one of three washing programmes for offset, printing cylinder or ink unit depending on the degree of contamination of the printing machine. The machine constantly analyses its degree of contamination (!) and, depending on the selected programme, can thus reduce the consumption of cleaning fluids and wash cloths.
Powder Assistant system for intelligent control of the powder supply;
Prinect Press Centre XL 3 with LED backlighting, 24-inch touch screen and gesture control. Wallscreen equipment is no longer a surprise and IMHO is considered essential;
Press Centre mobile apps to track machine performance and Maintenance App for service management and access to documentation;
A fully remote-controlled Hycolor Pro dampening system that makes adjustments by changing the gap on one side of a pair of dampening rolls;
Waste Management automation (including Sheet IDs to track every sheet that passes through the machine). This machine really makes an impression. At drupa 2024, Heidelberg showed an eight-colour XL106-8-P machine equipped with an automatic plate changer. But the most interesting solution, in my opinion, was the Waste Management. The machine was connected to a logistical waste disposal system. After the last print unit of the machine, the entire surface of the printed sheet is monitored. The rejected sheet is not just dumped into the reject tray at high speed directly from the delivery. It goes into a shredder where it is milled into thin strips, which in turn are sucked into a press module from Hunkeler and recycled.

And a host of other new features.

Plate to Unit was shown at DRUPA by Heidelberg on the same XL 106-8-P machine. It is part of a complete printing plate logistics automation solution, will reduce the number of times plates are touched from the time they are made to the print unit from 23 to just three. In the printing machine, all the plates are loaded in one place into the plate feeding system. The plates are then transferred to a conveyor belt, transported to the correct units and automatically installed. The system is capable of up to 20 (!) plate changes per hour. It can even be fitted to some models that were produced before 2020.

On the neighbouring, five-colour machine with coater, which is intended for the packaging market, a new lacquer pump was shown. But what looked particularly interesting was the system for quickly changing the revolver-type anilox cylinders. True, there is now one less of them than before.

Thus, if the principle of offset printing itself cannot be changed, it is possible to find ways of speeding up the printing process itself through ever more complete automation. Thus, a modern machine with maximum automation has become about one and a half times more productive than the machines of the mid-2000s. How many customers actually need it, and what kind of sales and development department should be needed to load such a high-speed machine – these are the questions I have never found answers to….