The Natal Witness Printing Company is relying on Tectra Automation, local distributor of Bosch Rexroth products and components, for support of its modern KBA Comet shaftless printing press, manufactured by Koenig & Bauer AG in Germany.
A schematic of the KBA Comet shaftless printing press
The multimillion-rand investment, one of the most advanced shaftless presses in South Africa, employs various Bosch Rexroth components to print up to 70 000 copies an hour of the Natal Witness and various other publications. A single-width, double-circumference, fully-computerised press, the KBA Comet uses shaftless technology and damping systems, as well as a turret paster, which automatically replaces and joins one paper reel with the next without interrupting the print run.
Rexroth's Electric Drives and Control division, formerly Indramat, pioneered shaftless drive technology. Today, its SYNAX technology allows for the elimination of mechanical linkages and the use of high-precision servo drives produces machine units that are optimised to the process. This allows repetitive jobs to be completed rapidly and converting processes changed over flexibly to new products and formats at the touch of a button. Machine axes can be synchronised to specific requirements by means of various operating modes. The SYNAX200 modular controls and intelligent drives are the basis for the development of modular machine designs. High register accuracy - thanks to low torsional elasticities and gear backlash - results in considerably less start-up waste. This reduces manufacturing costs and makes the production of small editions more economical.
The modern press, housed in Pietermaritzburg, incorporates 38 Bosch Rexroth drive stations with the latest DIAX 04 servo drives, MHD motors, DKR drives and 2AD asynchronous motors specifically selected for the synchronisation of the shaftless printing press. MHD motors are known for synchronisation of shaftless printing presses, because of their high resolution, high-dynamic nature. DIAX 04 servo drives deliver further speed advantages by allowing control loops to be handled via fibre optic cables.
With the advantages that shaftless printing presses have over synchronised predecessors, the press now runs significantly faster (at 625 m per minute), and setup-times have been reduced from 5 hours down to 1 hour. Capacity has been sufficiently increased to allow various other newspapers and inserts to be handled by the same new printing press. Although operators received training from KBA and greatly reduced maintenance as a result of the press's modern design, the high-value investment requires the close proximity of Bosch Rexroth qualified support technicians, who will be supplied by Tectra Automation. Computerised control allows faultfinding to be carried out from as far away as Germany, via the Internet. The press uses SERCOS - the preferred digital interface between motion control components and digital drives.
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