EuroWire May 2024

Technology News

The hidden costs of industrial printing Coding and marking specialist Leibinger is often asked how customers can reduce printing costs. The response can be surprising, as it includes costs that may not have been considered. The company has detailed six ways that printers cost money, and how to reduce total cost.

A high-quality, reliable brand will cost more. Higher speeds and more features also add to the cost, so the best way to economise is to ensure you do not pay for things you do not need. Consumables: reducing the amount of ink and solvent used will reduce costs. Leibinger states that its latest printers have one of the lowest consumption ratings on the market. The company’s ink cartridges are emptied down to the last drop and do not require separate disposal. Power: energy prices remain high. Costs can be reduced by choosing equipment with a low wattage rating, such as the new IQJET, which draws only 36W. While it is useful to know the different ways that printers cost money, Leibinger’s Total Cost of Ownership Calculator can quickly provide the numbers to show exactly how much could be saved. The calculator is available on the company’s website. Paul Leibinger GmbH & Co KG www.leibinger-group.com

Leibinger’s Total Cost of Ownership Calculator can identify hidden costs and calculate individual savings

Downtime can be created by poor print quality as well as by poor printer performance. Some conventional printers need cleaning between pauses in production, meaning the production line sits idle: some printers can take up to 20 minutes to stabilise before they are ready to print again. Leibinger’s printer technology keeps unused ink in a 100 per cent airtight system, so production is not held up for cleaning. Maintenance: a significant part of the overall cost. The approach of some printing solution providers revolves around the wholesale replacement of ink core modules – the entire hydraulic system – at predetermined time intervals. However, Leibinger’s IQJET is manufactured using durable, high quality components and a product design that minimises wear and tear,

allowing it to be maintenance-free for five years, removing this cost altogether. Labour: it is important to consider the time cost of people – how long operators spend setting up or cleaning printers, or re-programming them between jobs. Printers that are easy to install, manage and configure, with remote control options, for example, will cost less in the long run. The IQJET’s drag-and-drop interface and simple print-job creation process are intuitive, requiring no extensive employee training. Purchase price: the most obvious cost of printing is the up-front cost of equipment, although this is typically less than 30 per cent of the total costs.

Flexible winding technology While flexibility is desired in cable production, realising this can be a major challenge. Kurre Systems is presenting a range of fully automatic double winders with improved parameters and features for fast, reliable and flexible winding at the end of a process.

Side doors allow easy access to the inside of the machine, and the winding stations in particular are easily accessible. The machine is operated via a touch panel with intuitive software from Kurre Systems. Kurre Spezialmaschinenbau GmbH www.kurre-systems.de

Designed for use within core extrusion lines, the winders offer a maximum winding speed of 2,000m/min for coil sizes of 630mm or 800mm, depending on the upstream process. The two large coil magazines hold empty or full coils, and in combination with two winding stations can ensure a continuous production process. In terms of flexibility, the winders feature variably adjustable tension ranges, ensured by an integrated dancer that enables multiple assignment of the deflection wheels, providing a tensile force range of 3 to 60 N. For a wide range of coils with different bore holes, an electrically adjustable stepped pintle can be used to eliminate set-up times. With this optional solution, manual pintle change is no longer necessary and the production process does not have to be interrupted.

The integrated dancer can be assigned two positions, allowing flexible adjustment of tensile force

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May 2024

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