As we discussed in our earlier blog on ‘How to invest in digital printing in uncertain times’, in the midst of this global pandemic many companies are electing to delay large capital investment and focus instead on smaller speculations to improve productivity and efficiency in existing press lines.
Contiweb’s non-stop winding solutions help to increase productivity and print capacity, without the need to invest in a whole new press – whether they be faster replacements or additional systems to add to capacity. We’re seeing printers that invested in inkjet presses with mono unwinders and mono rewinders some years ago are now hitting their limits in terms of productivity and capacity. As such, Contiweb has experienced growing demand for non-stop winding solutions.
Maximising uptime
Digital inkjet printing has always required good uptime to support profitable businesses, which has never been more crucial. Some print companies change reels as frequently as every hour. Either a reel is empty at the beginning of the press line, or full at the end – when inline finishing is not employed – or a new job requires different coating on the paper, or web width, or weight. This has huge impact on the uptime of the press line, drastically reducing speed and capacity.
Unwinder loading and manual splicing takes about 15 minutes. This may not sound like much, but if you change a reel every hour, those 15 minutes lost means two hours of downtime each eight-hour shift, and at an average printer running two shifts a day, five days a week, that’s 20 hours saved every week and a thousand hours a year – imagine what else a print operator could do in that time! By the way, rewinder unloading and loading a new core takes another 10 minutes, so the annual loss of time can thus amount to over 1500 hours. Preparing a splice on a Contiweb non-stop unwinder or rewinder takes two minutes and does not require a production stop, it can be done whilst the press is printing.
Continuous operation
Contiweb’s non-stop unwinders and rewinders can splice paper reels of different weight, web width or coating, so reels don’t need to change just because the job specs change. Even varied finishing requirements can be accommodated as the Contiweb CRN rewinder can roll up jobs onto different cores.
Another factor that makes Contiweb systems stand apart from the competition is the communication between systems. Contiweb’s non-stop CDN unwinder sends a signal to the CRN rewinder, so that the splice made by the CDN at the beginning of the process always ends positioned on outside of the rolled up reel – and not hidden in the middle. The equipment can also send and receive messages from the inkjet press, so the press can decide where the splice should be.
Contiweb CD unwinding systems and CR rewinding systems are compatible with digital web presses from all well-known manufacturers.
