East meets West at KBA Open House

- Printers from UK joined by delegation from South Korea at event in Germany

 

- Different printing technologies shown to attendees

 

On February 28, some 30 packaging printers from the UK joined a corresponding delegation from South Korea at the KBA facility in Radebeul near Dresden to get information on the latest trends in the printing and finishing of packaging products.

 

The group included a number of representatives from international packaging companies, such as Chesapeake, but also printers who have not used KBA technology to date.

 

The first of the print demonstrations presented by KBA head of sheet-fed marketing Jürgen Veil took place on a six-colour Rapida 145 with in-line coater, and the company showed a fast job changeover with simultaneous plate changing using DriveTronic SPC, and different coating effects based on the latest UV technology from KBA.

 

The switch from a dispersion coating for the first job to matte-gloss special effects for the second was accomplished despite also requiring the conversion from conventional to UV coatings in the coater tower.

 

For the next demonstrations, the group moved on to a six-colour Rapida 106 coater press with a raised foundation for increased pile heights. After production at full press speed with a 350g per sq m GD2 board, a job using heavy display board with a thickness of almost one millimetre was printed at 13,000sph, and finished with drip-off effect coating.

 

Guests were then shown a six-colour Rapida 106 in a double-coating configuration with in-line ColdFoiler unit. After a simple dispersion coating, a five-color folding carton for hair coloring was refined by adding a cold-foil finish.

 

The special feature of this process is the optimization of foil application by way of web splitting and multiple foil use. The foil web runs through the impression gap several times, and thus minimizes foil consumption by reducing the area that is left unused.

 

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