Digitization and collaboration create growth opportunities

New offerings from Heidelberg are aimed primarily at the growing market for packaging and high-quality commercial printing. The company launched its ‘Fire’ product line comprising its entire digital printing portfolio. The Heidelberg Primefire 106 digital printing system developed in collaboration with Fujifilm is designed to open up new market segments by making industrial digital printing more flexible. The medium-term goal is for digital business to account for over 10 percent of total sales at Heidelberg.

The CEO’s of Fujifilm and Heidelberg, Shigetaka Komori and Dr. Gerold Linzbach, respectively, announced that the two organizations will continue to seek further collaboration to target growth potentials in the printing industry. Both companies have complementary expertise with Fujifilm’s strengths in material science, core inkjet capability, and system development, and Heidelberg’s capabilities in system design, manufacturing and end-to-end workflow.

“The reorientation of Heidelberg is showing positive results. An industrial digital inkjet printing solution enables both operational excellence and new business models for an expanding set of new applications. This collaboration and the launch of Primefire underscore the traction we are getting with our new digital strategy. We’re looking to achieve further growth in the future with our investments in the digital and services business. The high level of customer interest at drupa confirms we’ve adopted the right strategy,” says Gerold.

“We are now seeing the outcome of our strong partnership resulting in this completely new system design in less than 24 months through our co-development with Heidelberg. This collaboration is a key element of our strategic direction, as it enables us to drive innovation in industrial digital printing with our inkjet technology,” adds Shigetaka.

Primefire 106 B1 industrial digital printer

The new sheet-fed production system is based on inkjet technology from Fujifilm and the Heidelberg Peak Performance platform from its offset technology, establishing a new category for industrial printing applications in the B1 (707x1000mm) format.

The Primefire 106 enables packaging printers in the production of variable or personalized packaging. The digital printing system offers 1,200 x 1,200 dpi at a printing speed of up to 2,500 sheets per hour, achieving production volumes of up to 1.5 million sheets per month in future productivity modes. The 7-color inkjet system with Heidelberg Multicolor technology also covers up to 95 per cent of the Pantone color space.

From ‘Push to Start’ to ‘Push to Stop’

Heidelberg believes a novel approach is required for press operation, to free operators from the burden of routine tasks and to support them with intelligent systems so that they can transform the technical potential of their machines into actual productivity. The company calls its new operating philosophy ‘Push to Stop’. Whereas until now processes were actively started by the operator, in future the press will do this itself. The operator only interrupts the autonomously running process chain if necessary. This raises the effectiveness of print production to previously unattainable levels, enables better planning of processes, and continuous process monitoring lowers the error rate.

The Push to Stop operating concept is achieved on Speedmaster presses by means of the new Prinect Press Center XL 2 machine control station with smart Intellistart 2 user software and its assistance systems such as ‘Intelliguide’. The operator can clearly see and follow all steps displayed on the large Wallscreen XL. With this new human-machine interface, the operator can navigate processes and retains an overview, even when there are numerous job changes. This can then be expanded all the way to autonomous printing. This way an intelligent solution is established, in which the press automatically works through the queued jobs. The operator only interrupts the process if necessary.

The Push to Stop concept is available for the new generation Speedmaster, covering the series XL 75, CX/SX 102, XL 106 and XL 145/162, which are equipped with the Prinect Press Center XL 2, the Wallscreen XL, and AutoPlate Pro or AutoPlate XL 2 and Inpress Control 2 auto¬mation components.

Speedmaster XL 106 sheetfed offset press

The new Speedmaster XL 106 can be ordered as a straight or a perfecting press. It produces up to 18,000 sheets an hour, and can be flexibly configured to suit individual customer requirements. Heidelberg exhibited two Speedmaster XL 106 presses at drupa – the Speedmaster XL 106 six-color press with double coating is aimed at packaging and label printers to achieve fast production and setup of jobs with high-quality finishing, and the Speedmaster XL 106 eight-color perfecting press is aimed at commercial and web-to-print printers, who face the challenge of frequent job changes.

To achieve automation, the Speedmaster XL 106 has a new feature called the ‘Hycolor Multidrive’, which can operate the inking and dampening units independently from the main drive. For example, the inking units are washed while the main drive is responsible for changing the coating plates, or washing the rubber blankets and impression cylinders. Individual inking units can be shut down if they are not needed.

Prinect Press Center XL 2 control station

The heart of the new-generation Speedmaster XL 106 is the Prinect Press Center XL 2 machine control station. It assumes the role of the digital interface in the workflow as well as the intelligent human/machine interface which helps the operator to fully exploit the performance of the machine. The Prinect Press Center XL 2 includes the patented Intellistart 2 software which automatically organizes the optimum job change, independently initiates automated makeready processes, and gives the operator clear instructions when manual intervention is required.

To ensure the operator has a complete overview, Intellistart 2 has been integrated into the new Wallscreen XL and is divided into four areas. Jobs released for a machine are listed in a ‘Job Queue’, and can be moved using drag and drop. Intellistart 2 automatically works through these jobs in the defined order.

Cloud-based services

The Heidelberg Cloud is an information and service platform adapted for the print media industry. It records and analyzes data from over 10,000 networked machines. On this basis, Heidelberg offers its customers preventive service programs to improve machine availability and boost the productivity of the entire pressroom.

The Heidelberg Assistant gives customers personal access to all information and services relating to their businesses. The tool is divided into four sections: Print Shop, Shopping, Support, and Administration. The features of Heidelberg Assistant use existing data as their basis in order to ensure support for order transactions, service queries, and general information.

The Heidelberg Assistant also permits direct access to the new Heidelberg eShop, an online store which has been launched in 27 countries. On this platform, customers can order consumables — and, in the future, selected service parts. Payments can be made on receipt of an invoice or by credit card. In the future, the shipping status will be trackable in real time.

Gallus Labelfire 340 industrial digital converting press

Gallus DCS 340, the modular, digital converting system developed by Heidelberg/Gallus and Fujifilm has a new name, Gallus Labelfire 340. An inkjet printing module integrated into a Gallus machine platform combines the latest digital printing technology with the benefits of conventional printing and further processing technology. By combining the strengths of digital printing with an inline finishing process that has been specially optimized for digital printing, the Gallus Labelfire enables users to varnish, embellish and further process labels inline – from the roll to the finished die-cut label in a single production operation.

The Gallus Labelfire 340 also has conventional converting modules taken from the Gallus ECS 340. The entire system is integrated into Heidelberg’s print media workflow Prinect.