In 2006, Kala Jyothi installed a new Komori System 38S heatset press at its web offset plant in Kondapur near Hitec city in Hyderabad for printing magazines and newspaper supplements. The press has been running well with excellent service on the whole over the years. From the outset, it had a KHS-AI (Advanced Interface) preset system for shortened makeready, which remembers ink and dampening preset and corrections from previous runs and incorporates these in current runs.
However, when Kala Jyothi’s KHS-AI system stopped working about 5 or 6 years after the press was commissioned, Komori was unable to fix it although the request was well within 10 years of the press installation. The company spoke of the requirement for a new software purchase at considerable cost and was also unable to put in a modern closed loop color at a cost-effective price or convincing time frame saying that the solution had to be redeveloped for what it described as an older generation press.
However, the German press manroland web systems together with a Swiss interface supplier was ready to retrofit and upgrade Kala Jyothi’s Komori System 38S press with a Swiss interface and a manroland web systems Grapho Metronic Inline Density Control system – a closed loop color density and control system. Kala Jyothi director Kartik Alapati says, “They said they were ready to make it work, and we said if you can make it work you can have the order. Remarkably the manroland web and Swiss interface combination didn’t even ask us for an advance although it was the first time they had done this interface on a Komori System 38S. They were quite confident and we were very pleased to see a German company that is ready to provide not just a new press but every type of accessory and upgrade together with engineering service in case you need just another unit or some modification or let’s say an improvement in your quarter folder. This was super interesting.”
“We understand that life is competitive nowadays,” says Kala Jyothi director Ramnath Alapati, adding, “Others such as QuadTek and QI were also interested in the competitive estimate and time frame that we received from the Swiss team, which were a fraction of the cost and the whole process took just 45 days. The actual machine was down for a few hours only on two days for the retrofit work. After shifting to the Grapho Metronic system, it took us another few days to create the new curves. We are even looking at a similar solution for our Goss heatset press, which is a year younger than the Komori 38S.”
The Grapho Metronic inline density control (IDC) measuring system features quick measuring and response cycles with high resolving capacity cameras, LED flash illumination and a design that is claimed to have no moving parts, and thus no wear. With the parallel arrangement of the cameras, the measuring strip can be covered across the full width of the paper in one measuring. The high measuring frequency means that with the dynamic fast-reaction controls, process fluctuations can often be compensated for even before the tolerance limits are exceeded. The control process includes the zonal shift elements and also the ink fountain roller thus covering the entire ink flow effectively, using the linked fountain-key opening actuators and fountain-roller speed.u
This article has inputs from manroland web systems.
