For Heidelberg lean manufacturing, ecological printing and integration is very much the driving strategy of what they will announce at Ipex. This increased efficiency will be across its whole range of products and services.

Heidelberg sees Ipex as the barometer of the health of the industry and it comes at just the right time as the company sees the global economy improving slightly with orders starting to pick up. This is particularly the case in what they term the threshold countries, and an upturn is also being seen in the services and packaging printing areas.

Heidelberg has seen in the small format B3 press area that demand for offset presses has significantly dropped as print runs get ever shorter and here they see the real impact of digital printing. During 2010 Heidelberg will announce its strategy for re-entry into the digital market through a partnering arrangement with one of the digital suppliers. Discussions are under way at present and an announcement will be made before the end of this year.

In the VLF press area that Heidelberg entered at drupa with Speedmaster XL145 and XL162, the company is stating in terms of orders it has more than 30 per cent of the market and has sold over 30 presses worldwide of these formats. The success of the VLF presses is seen as a key item for the future of Heidelberg.

Among the new developments to be introduced at Ipex are the following:

• Non-Stop delivery for Speedmaster XL105 – This system allows palettes of printed work to be changed, or different jobs to be separated into piles without stopping the press. This gives the additional benefits of eliminating wash up cycles that are normally required at each pile change.

• FoilStar enhancements – The FoilStar cold foil module was introduced at Ipex 2006 and Heidelberg has installed nearly 50 such units since then. The new enhancement supports indexing of the foil to reduce wastage. The current system requires a length of foil the circumference of the blanket cylinder to be cut off whereas with indexing only a length of foil corresponding to the sheet size is cut. Heidelberg’s figures show this saves a huge amount of foil with resulting CO₂ savings.

• Prinect colour enhancements – The Prinect image control systems for managing colour on the press have enhancements in a number of areas.  The first is the next generation Image Control that is being launched. Image Control is the only system that measures the total printed sheet spectrally rather than just the colour bar. This now features a much higher resolution for spectral image measurement for enhanced quality reading and new automated setup functions based upon prepress data. The new Image Control will be available for the end of 2010. Netprofiler is a new solution introduced for checking, calibration and certification of the spectrophotometric colour-measuring device on Prinect Axis Control and Prinect Inpress Control. Prinect Inspection Control/PDF is being launched at Ipex. This is a new inline inspection solution that enables the scanning of press sheets comparing them with the prepress PDF to ensure all print sheets meet requirements when printing starts and during the production run.

• Speedmaster 52 and Anicolor enhancements – A new shorter delivery option plus inline coating system is being offered. This reduces the length of the press by 80 cm to allow it to fit better into smaller locations. The inline coater can be used for both protective coatings allowing faster completion of jobs, as well as producing matt, gloss and drip-off coatings. This also has a new DryStar combination dryer system. The Speedmaster 52 Anicolor that is the innovative technology for very short run printing now has more than 130 presses installed. This press is unique among offset presses for the very limited wastage at setup with less than 20 sheets being required to get to customer quality. A new feature for Ipex is the ability to print with UV inks allowing for printing on non-absorbent substrates such as plastics. A major benefit here is cost savings in make ready where in this market each substrate sheet can be a substantial cost. The Speedmaster 52 with Anicolor for UV is equipped with water-cooled inking unit temperature control. It can be used for wet offset UV, waterless UV or a combination of both modes. The waterless UV variant can if necessary be equipped with a cooling system for the plate cylinder.

• Postpress developments – Heidelberg will bring a number of new developments in the postpress area to Ipex. The first of these is the new Eurobind Pro that is a new adhesive binder based upon the Eurobind 4000. It is claimed that the Eurobind Pro is the most cost-effective binder in its class with up to 50% shorter make ready times than equivalent models. Other new products are the new Stahlfolder KH66 combi folder with automatic cross-fold unit, and the new Streamfeeder on the Stitchmaster ST 450 saddlestitcher that improves performance of this product.

The main feature of the stand is as emphasised before is enhanced performance with lean manufacturing functionalities plus environmentally better operations. Heidelberg will also highlight its new services operations to assist customers in structuring lean manufacturing.

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