Bobst boosts finishing at Körtel & Hieke

The Expertcut 106 LER is a flatbed die-cutter for converting paper, cartonboard, heavy solid cardboard, certain plastics and corrugated cardboard in sizes of up to 760 x 1,060mm.

In day-to-day operations, Körtel & Hieke handles print runs of between 500 and 250,000 sheets, with average print runs of 30,000 sheets. There are days in which up to five job changes take place, while for larger jobs it sometimes runs non-stop for days at its full speed of 9,000sph.

By installing the Bobst Expertcut 106 LER flatbed die-cutter with dynamic in-line blank separation, Körtel & Hieke has boosted production capacity for folding cartons and blister packs by about 40 percent since the end of 2013.

The unit features a quick-change concept allowing tools to be changed in a shorter time. Bobst has also introduced various other innovations to further reduce set-up times, such as a stripping and separating station with additional controls, and new sheet delivery functions and improved fine adjustment during tool set-up.

The Expertcut was installed by Körtel & Hieke after it installed a Bobst Expertfold 110 folder gluer and saw a dramatic increase in its productivity.

Jörg Körtel, managing partner at Körtel & Hieke, said: ‘Our folder gluer productivity saw a significant improvement when we installed a Bobst Expertfold 110 two and a half years ago. The logical consequence of this investment was to replace the non-Bobst die-cutter, which had been installed in 2005, with a new Bobst flatbed die-cutter with integrated blank separation.’

Körtel added: ‘Die-cutting performance is vastly improved by maximizing speed on virtually all orders, but the in-line blank separation of the Expertcut 106 LER also plays a big part.’