Product of the Week

These days, the margins that printers and mailing houses are able to charge on polywrapping are negligible: it’s almost a free service. Forced into it by a lack of money, mailing houses are cutting down on the salaries they pay to skilled operators and are reaping the painful reward of that policy: more unskilled operators leading to increased downtime due to jams, higher spoilage levels and slower machine speeds.

Machinery manufacturers have set themselves the task of solving, or at least minimising the profit problem by increasing efficiency – but how?

Higher-speed machines are not the answer, because all mailing lines are limited by the speed of the post-line add-ons – generally either feeding into mail cages or into Royal Mail sacks – so it’s irrelevant what speed the line runs. Faster makeready is the obvious answer, especially with run lengths dropping – with most mailing lines of 10,000cph and above taking between 20 minutes and an hour to makeready, the set-up is the obvious area to reclaim in the name of profit. And right at the forefront of reclamation activity is Italian manufacturer Sitma, with its new-look 1150 FW film and paper wrapper.

The 1150 FW was originally launched in early 2007 as a high-speed mailing line. But it was also the perfect base from which to tackle the makeready question. Accordingly, Sitma has added extra set-up automation to the 1150 FW and relaunched the line at Drupa, where UK agent Integra International made a third, as yet unnamed sale to add to the two 1150 FWs already installed in England at Priority Mailing and Abstrakt Services.

Extending automation
It’s standard on mailing lines above 10,000cph or thereabouts to automate most of the set-up for the wrapping unit itself, and to hold an on-board memory bank to store job parameters. What Sitma has added to the mix is auto set-up for the gathering track, the shuttle and main product feeders, and the compensating stacker at the delivery. It amounts to end-to-end automation; all that’s left to set is the sizes of the different inserts and onserts, which must be set on the individual feeders. What this means is that for pre-programmed jobs – which most may be – all that’s needed in the way of makeready is to load the insert/onsert feeders and dial in the sizes of their contents; to set up the inkjet heads if they’re being used, to feed a different film, if necessary, through the unwind rollers and position the film reels for side-sealing if that’s being used. It all adds up to a total of a few minutes – which, in mailing line terms, is tantamount to a revolution.

Like all of Sitma’s poly/paper wrappers, the 1150 FW is built around a common gathering unit and inherits the family trait of modularity: feeders and stackers can all be swapped from machine to machine. All feeders are servo-driven, which helps with plug-and-play operation, and also allows dynamic phasing, which matches the acceleration rate between fed product and gathering belt. But the wrapping unit in the middle has been specifically designed for the 1150 FW, and has the option of being able to carry out two very attractive value-added extras on a pack: side-sealing and header-banding.

Financial sense
Side-sealing is a purely aesthetic issue, as it renders the seal more or less invisible on the pack. The technical difficulty with side-sealing is in keeping control of the rewind of the excess film that’s trimmed in the sealing process – the 1150 FW uses a flying tensioner and a double-wind system that can switch between one rewind reel and another when the first is full.

Header-banding was developed mainly for newsstand copy work, which remains the apotheosis of film-wrapping. The wrapping line creates a stand-up of extra film at the head of the wrapped product, and the Sitma line seals this at the head and at the foot, where the stand-up meets the product, keeping the product secure.

Integra sales director Richard MacLean is excited by the possibilities offered by the 1150 FW’s added-value features: We’re rolling them out as an option set, he says, because it has to make financial sense. They can be easily retro-fitted. In practice, we think probably around half of our customers will want these features, because they offer such a good and cost-effective way to add a bit of much-needed value to the pack overall.

Perhaps unusually at this end of the mailing technology sector, the 1150 FW can be made fully JDF-compatible. We’re only recently getting requests for it, notes MacLean, and they’re mainly from the enveloping or enclosing side of things, particularly transactional, where they need to have complete systems that are as automated as possible.

Other options available on the 1150 FW include the choice of a 60mm maximum stack height rather than the 30mm standard, and an I version or a standard O version. This latter refers to the movement and design of the sealer bars – the I version adds a counter-sealer bar that allows for a tighter pack, although this reduces its top speed to 15,000cph. The 1150 FW does produce a fairly tight pack to start out with – MacLean says the typical inside movement is less than 2mm – but the I version makes that tighter still.

Command and control
Selective feeding is the final option on the 1150 FW, driven by Sitma’s own SitmaJet Controller that tracks each individual product from one end to the other and reads an address from a carrier sheet, tallies this with the Controller’s data and activates the selected feeders. The Controller also keeps track of damaged packs and can create a ‘re-order’ file for re-running damaged quotas.

The 1150 FW comes with Sitma’s usual choice of insert/onsert feeders, including a pick-and-place feeder for promotional items that unusually has the ability to place objects at specific locations onto the main product; this can be tied in to any on-machine glue unit and the film-to-pack registration so that items can be positioned to appear in a film window. Sitma also has another feeder designed to overcome the problem of ‘bump and run’, where light inserts bounce back from the peg on the track: a set of rotating vacuum disks grip the insert and accelerate it down the track in a slightly diagonal movement to minimise the inertia causing the bump.

Like all Sitma machines, the 1150 FW can inkjet anywhere onto the film for addressing purposes – because the film is addressed before it goes into the wrap unit, rather than after, the inkjet heads can be positioned at any point on the film’s length or width.

The 1150 FW is likely to find favour with both mailing houses and publications printers who have mailing services in-house, or who offer newsstand copywrapping services. MacLean is clear that it’s not the cheapest option on the market, but as he says, for a particular purpose, and to add some value while keeping operator skill requirements, and therefore salaries, as low as possible, this line really fits the bill.

SPECIFICATIONS
Max product size to be wrapped 500x330mm
Min product size to be wrapped 100x150mm
Max stack height 30mm (option for 60mm)
Max speed O version: 18,000 cycles per hour; I version: 15,000 cycles per hour
Film thickness range 12–50 microns
Price 1150 FW with shuttle feeder, six insert/onsert feeders, header band and side-seal capability and stacker with full Mailsort control: £350,000-£450,000
Contact Integra International 01420 593680 www.integra-intl.co.uk

BUHRS SERIES 4000 MAILING LINES
Three machines in the series, each of which handles a different maximum size. All servo-motor-driven, automatically synched and the wrapping unit is automatically set up. Two of the three machines can wrap a higher stack height than the Sitma.
Max product size to be wrapped: 380x420mm
Min product size to be wrapped: 180x200mm
Max speed: 18,000 cycles per hour
Price: Buhrs 4000 with shuttle feeder, six insert/onsert feeders and stacker: from £300,000
Contact: Buhrs UK 01256 329191 www.buhrs.com

HUGO BECK SUPER 400 XLM/15-F
The Super 400 machine is a bit slower than the Sitma but can wrap a much bigger and higher stack. Its feeders are likewise mobile and can be swapped in and out as necessary; all are servo-controlled, and the set-up panel can be moved around the machine.
Max product size to be wrapped: 450x500mm
Min product size to be wrapped: 110x150mm
Max speed: 15,000 cycles per hour
Price: not available
Contact: Kern 01489 564141 www.kern.co.uk

MULLER MARTINI ONYX/RUBIN
Muller Martini teams its Onyx inserter with the Rubin film wrapping unit and its Perfetto stacker to form a full modular line that can additionally be hooked up to one of its saddle-stitchers or binders. Modular base means that feeders can be swapped around.
Max product size to be wrapped: 420x310mm
Min product size to be wrapped: 260x148mm
Max speed: 15,000 cycles per hour
Price: not available
Contact: Muller Martini 01753 653588 www.mullermartini.com