The digital heart of Heidelberg

Print In addition to world premieres, Heidelberg
at Ipex will focus on the integration of processes across all areas of a
printing plant and places this topic in the foreground.
The printing industry is in the
Upswing. At least that is the conclusion drawn by the news from some
suppliers. Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, for example, reported
(Heidelberg) already achieved significant increases in earnings in the
Press (offset printing) and Postpress (further processing) divisions.

"The favorable business development in the print media industry has
has stabilized, even if it varies greatly from region to region," describes
Jürgen Rautert, Chief Technology Officer at Heidelberg, the overall
positive developments. Rautert is looking forward to a stable
order intake, in particular the development of the Postpress division,
which reported a positive result for the first time in the overall course of business.
To make sure it stays that way, Heidelberg will be represented at the
three new products in this area at the Ipex trade fair.
imagine: a saddle stitcher with a speed of up to 14000 cycles/hour
(Stitchmaster 450), a perfect binder (Eurobind 4000) that can bind up to 4000
books/hour, and a new generation of
folder gluers (Diana X 115/135), with which up to 20000
boxes/hour can be processed.

What the bare performance data of the machines do not reveal is their
Integration options in a workflow. One 
process-oriented integration of the machines into the management and
Production process support print shops and
processing companies when changing orders and enable
these, for example, a reduction in set-up times and the exact
Post-calculation of orders. For this purpose, the machines can be controlled via the
Job Definition Format (JDF) preset data from a job definition program.
calculation/MIS system and from the prepress system and are therefore
preset faster.

Quality assurance during printing
In order to ensure largely error-free and high-quality print production
Heidelberg is further optimizing offset printing. Especially
for industrial manufacturing companies, for example large
packaging printers, the company will be presenting new and in
measuring devices integrated into the machine. The spectrophotometric
Inline color measurement system Prinect Inpress Control - from 2007 for the
Speedmaster CD 74 and XL 105 press series available - enables the
faster in-color arrival and therefore higher quality with less
waste. The second innovation, the Prinect sheet control system
Inspection Control (for CD 102 and XL 105), checked by means of
Digital cameras the sheet for technical printing errors such as hickeys,
missing pressure marks, stripes, scratches and the like.

One way for print shops to achieve better margins is to
additional print enhancements. For its Speedmaster CD 74
and CD 102, Heidelberg will be offering a ColdFoil module from 2007, with which
shiny metallic (cold) foils can be applied. These
Innovation is particularly suitable for packaging and
label printers. To apply the films, two
Printing units
required, one for applying an adhesive and a second for
Application of the cold foil. The highlight here is that the printing units are
Immediately used as normal offset printing units at the end of the job
can be.

New inking unit technology
To enable print shops operating in the smaller 35¥50 cm format to
economic production, Heidelberg will participate in the
Ipex will be presenting a new inking unit technology. Anicolor, as the name suggests
of the inking unit, which works without color zones, is to be available from the beginning of 2007 for the
Speedmaster SM-52 series (four-color models) available as an option
be. The inking unit consists of significantly fewer rollers than a
conventional plant, resulting in very fast coloring -
Depending on the print subject, only 10 to 20 start-up sheets are subsequently
required. In the Anicolor inking unit, conventional printing plates and
-colors can be used. This provides offset printers with a particularly
machine that is competitive with digital printing.

At the heart of Prinect
Heidelberg differs most clearly from its competitors
through its integration approach. As a world first, Heidelberg will be
the Ipex the complete
integration of all relevant processes in a print shop.
In order to make the areas of management, prepress, printing and postpress even
closer together, the printing press manufacturer in Birmingham will
to present two newly developed products.

The Prinect Integration System, which is a centralized approach to
data relevant to the order within a print shop,
integrates the management and production processes - starting with
from order management through prepress and pressroom to
Further processing. In a JDF job ticket, all
order-relevant information is collected and the production route
described in detail. Based on this job ticket, the
individual processes are activated. Information such as material consumption and
process progress are reported back and can be checked at any time.
Prinect Cockpit or workstation can be made transparent.

The second new product, the Prinect Pressroom Manager, is available as a
the world's first purely JDF-based pressroom system to control and
Administrative center for all of the equipment required for print production
Data. This can be used to improve all workflows in the pressroom
or automate them. With these Prinect products Heidelberg realizes
the integrated print shop. This makes the company the first
manufacturers the vision announced by the CIP 4 organization in 2000 of the
complete JDF-based integration of printing operations.
   

Jürgen Franck