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| | Rockwell Automation & Styers Equipment:
Servo Controlled Flexographic Printing Solutions Help Meet Demands of Modern Commercial Printing Operations |
| | Customer: | | Styers Equipment
Overland Park, Kansas |
| | Country: | | United States |
| | Industry: | | OEM, Packaging, Printing / Publishing |
| | Services: | | Engineering Solutions |
| | Products: | | Drives, Motors, Operator Interfaces, Programmable Controllers, Software |
| | Executive Summary: | | |
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Background:
Styers Equipment Company is best known as a prime source for quality used printing equipment. Paul Styers started the company in 1983 after he sold his converter business. Styers was one of the first people to start the narrow web used equipment market because he understood that equipment most people would melt down or throw out still had value. He believed these durable assets could last up to twenty-five years and still had a monetary value.
Challenge:
Shimchock’s Litho Services, a customer of Styers Equipment, was under pressure from its customers to print on a larger variety of substrates, such as paper, film, foils and cartons. The company has also been challenged to use more sustainable materials. Rockwell Automation worked with Styers Equipment to help deliver a servo technology solution that allows Shimchock’s to meet—and even exceed—their customers’ demands.
Solution:
Rockwell Automation and Styers Equipment Company teamed up to produce an innovative servo controlled flexographic printing solution based on the Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture™ Logix Platform with integrated Kinetix® motion on a rebuilt used narrow web printing press. This innovative solution is designed to help meet the demanding registration and throughput needs of a modern commercial printing operation. Combining Rockwell Automation Integrated Architecture with Styers’ knowledge of flexographic equipment helps printers to extend their market reach, reduce capital expenses, and grow profits.
Companies today are running top quality products using a four-color process up to eight, sometimes twelve colors or more. In order to keep a neat, clear, concise image for long runs and registration, an error correction system is required. The error correction system makes it easier for Shimchock’s to print high-resolution, attention grabbing, graphics as well as tighten the registration.
Because a job might need to be run at different tension levels with different settings, Styers has employed a technology called “job memorization”. With this technique, a job can be changed to a different tension setting much quicker. Rockwell Automation Logix-controlled servo presses offer a recipe management system that helps reduce set up time by enabling operators to save printing presets.
Allen-Bradley® PanelView Plus™ HMI operator workstations from Rockwell Automation helps reduce downtime by providing operators with a single location for monitoring the entire press, as well as individual interfaces for monitoring each print deck. The press tells the operator everything that is going on, so the problem can be corrected. It indicates when the print pins are out and each function of the press that would shut the press down.
Styers chose to partner with Rockwell Automation because of our expertise in providing a total machine solution with integrated motion control that is also operator friendly.
Results:
Servo technology offers precise registration control, which reduces waste and customer complaints. In addition, Styers machine capabilities help to deliver value to the end user with its improved accuracy. With the new servo press, Shimchock’s has decreased the waste by about 75%.
Using the recipe management functionality, Shimchock’s is also able to improve output. For example, they recently ran 4 copies of 330,000 labels in 9 hours, and saw an average change time to complete plate change back to register again of only 15 minutes.
The servo technology also offers very precise registration for the press, allowing it to work within a window of approximately 0.003 in., exhibiting a registration error of +/- 0.0015 in.
The improved accuracy on this press shows in the Shimchock finished product.
“The rolls are perfect - very nice, smooth rolls. Good edge alignment. It makes very accurate finishing on your customer's part when you’re going roll to roll,” said Stephen Shimchock, president, Shimchock’s Litho Services.
Conclusion:
Rockwell Automation is dedicated to providing cost-effective solutions for the flexographic printing market. Our team is constantly developing application code libraries that can be leveraged by customers, like Styers Equipment, to help build higher throughput machines, achieve faster time to market at lower total cost.
Styers believes customers will be happy with a cost-effective solution with the same capabilities as a new press.
“If you're looking to be that much more competitive and increase your return on investment, I would definitely look at a used or retrofit press, completely rebuilt and retrofitted with servo technology, by Rockwell Automation and Styers Equipment,” said Justin Styers, vice president, Styers Equipment Company.
Link to Styers video:
http://mms.rockwellautomation.com/idc/groups/multi_media/documents/multimedia/styersflexographic.wmv
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