Earlier this year West Australian Newspapers ordered a PK350FL parts cleaner, which supplier Jet technologies says is able to provide an effective solution for cleaning of both heatset and coldset inks, plus the traditional UV, solvent and water-based machines.

Gary Owens, printing manager at West Australian Newspapers says, “As is with most large high speed printing presses, all of the safety guards and shields that cover each printing unit tend to collect a large build-up of ink from the press’ normal printing process. The task of cleaning these guards was extremely time-consuming.”

He continues, “With the PK350FL this process takes approx half an hour. The advantage of this is that it has freed up these cleaners to now concentrate on other cleaning tasks.

“This has definitely become more noticeable over the last few months and the state of our press hall is the cleanest it has been. On top of this, we have now been able to accelerate our unit maintenance program and move onto each unit quicker.”

Jet Technologies has been working with clients in the narrow and wide web markets for some years on cleaning solutions, but this was the first newspaper printer.

Wes Scott, Jet Technologies area manager for SA and WA says the challenges with regards to the cold/heatset inks were significant, coupled with the need to build a machine large enough to clean the necessary parts, without compromising on the cleaning qualities.

He says, “As print houses examine the benefits of a clean working environment, we see more and more of them look to automation in order to provide a cost effective solution.”

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