Hailing the recent open house in Warsaw as a resounding success, Tom Cavalco, managing director of Mark Andy Europe, confirmed orders for seven flexo and digital presses as well as two Rotoflex inspection rewinders by the close of the three-day event that attracted more than 300 converters from around Europe, North Africa, South Asia and the Middle East.
Organized as an opportunity for narrow-web converters to have a first look at the technology that will be shown at Labelexpo Europe in Brussels later in the year, the open house featured live demonstrations of Mark Andy’s flexo and digital technology.
Making its European debut was the second-generation Performance Series P7 flexo press. This fully servo-driven machine is Mark Andy’s top-of-the-range offering, recently updated with converter-focused enhancements to support ease of operation, improved productivity and increased profit potential. For the open house, this 430 mm press was specified to offer almost limitless inline decoration and converting capabilities.
The P7 also has a corona treater, web cleaner, delam/relam, cold foil, hot foil and a Stork screen unit as well as a constant tension laminator for solvent-free lamination, a compact web translator for peel/reseal labels, QCDC (quick change die cut), a vertical die-slot sheeting station and advanced waste wind up. Two jobs were run off for demonstration purposes: a 12-micron PET with inline solvent-free lamination to a 28 micron BOPP film, and a shampoo label using extended gamut 7-color printing and die cutting at 200 m/min. The P7 also has a new high-speed option to run production speeds of 305 m/min.
Mark Andy’s digital offering was shown in two of the three available hybrid platforms: Digital Series, the production-level UV inkjet inline hybrid that is fully customizable; and Digital One, the dry toner entry-level prime label press. The Digital Series is a 330 mm line built on a Performance Series platform, providing a commercial approach for any size job. It is highly configurable according to individual requirements. Developed entirely in-house by Mark Andy, the inkjet station was shown with CMYK plus white, which offers screen-like quality.
The Digital Series was fitted with a corona treater, web cleaner, cold foil stamping/laminating, and the QCDC unit. Three substrates were run with multiple jobs and three die changes. There were eight variations of a beer label on PP with variable data versioning, holographic cold-foil varnish and die cutting. It was then switched to a clear-on-clear cosmetic job to show how inkjet quality matches silk screen. Finally, there was a material change to wine/estate stock to show how Mark Andy’s inkjet performs on textured material.
The Digital One press was shown with a 330 mm web width. The hybrid platform includes a CMYK dry toner unit preceded by a web cleaner, and followed by a flexo station for cold foil or lamination, and finally a die-cutting unit. Jobs demonstrated were an ice cream to doughnut label for instant change and multi-versioning with cast and cure foil, die cutting and inline finishing; and second, a multi-version flower label with variable data.
Representing the latest technology in web inspection and finishing was the Rotoflex VSI high-speed inspection slitter rewinder, capable of 305 m/min on a 330 (or 440 mm) web width. It features the latest web transport with Rotoflex eDrive 2.0 and URC 2.0 control system. The VSI has 711 mm unwind capacity, and either 406 mm or 457 mm rewind depending on whether a single or double spindle is fitted.
“There is a huge demand for flexo and digital hybrid knowledge and technology in Poland, and many of the emerging markets in Eastern Europe and beyond, so as the global leader in narrow-web presses Mark Andy has a duty to respond to that need,” Cavalco says. “The results speak for themselves with the large number of visitors who attended, and the excellent sales contracts that were concluded during the week.”
Mark Andy
www.markandy.com
