With its Automation Features, manroland Pushes All the Right Buttons

In the Press/Finishing Pavilion, manroland web systems (Booth 1119) is showcasing all the ways in which it can help make its customers more productive. At the top of the list is its suite of autoprint capabilities, including the AutoJobChange control package with QuickStart pre-inking; AutomaticPlateLoading (APL); and quality assurance functions with Inline Control systems for cut-off and color registers, as well as ink density.

The company is also showing off its popular Lithoman press platform. With a web width of 2.86 meters, the 96-page Lithoman can print up to 4.32 million A4 pages per hour. The platform can produce catalogs, magazines, and supplements of 8, 16, 24, 32, 48, 96 pages, all from a full-width web.

“For many printers, they’re able to produce the same range of 64- up to 104-page productions,” said Jason Elliott, Vice President, Sales, for manroland web systems. “That page count is up there with gravure machines, but with the cheaper manufacturing of offset, printers are able to get that level of output with only a few operators. They’re getting a lot of bang for their buck.”

The company’s Geoman e:line web press is well-suited to changes in the newspaper industry. “The newspaper market is consolidating in a number of ways,” said Elliott. “From the perspective of ownership, mid-size companies are growing because they’re picking up many papers.” On the other hand is the growing “print center” concept. “These companies are picking up papers, but they’re shutting down production and centralizing it from a regional site,” said Elliott. “[Geoman] is great press for that. It’s economical with high output speed and flexibility in production.”

The Geoman platform offers output speed up to 90,000 impressions per hour, with a high degree of automation, all in a very compact design. “It offers a lot of output in a very small footprint” said Elliott.

Also in the booth is manroland’s “big beast,” the Colorman, an economical option for very high production output. “A lot of newspaper printers that could replace two to six presses with one Colorman,” said Elliott.

But it’s the automation features that are manroland’s calling card, features that by necessity are retrofittable to older presses. “The presses are so automated and integrate so much technology, and we have to support our customers through the entire product lifecycle,” said Elliott. “As drive systems age, we need to replace them with new technology.” And it isn’t just for manroland’s presses. “The natural thing for us is to offer [retrofitting] on our equipment, and now have started to offer it on competitive equipment as well,” said Elliott.

Although known predominantly for its press platforms, manroland has been actively pursuing digital finishing, with its digital print finishing modules including the pin folder FoldLine and the FormerLine. Both modules are designed for short-run digital book production, allowing complete book blocks to be produced in offline/nearline or even complete inline processes.