A groundbreaking innovation that more than halves color matching time, reduces downtime by 70% and supercharges efficiency for gravure printers has been developed in a new collaboration between Esko and Bobst.
smartGRAVURE has been created by Bobst who partnered with Esko for the prepress and in-line color reading element of the solution. The result is a new tool that enables gravure printers to benefit from a fully digitalized workflow, optimally producing exceptional and consistent quality, minimizing waste of substrates and inks and maximizing efficiency across the print process.
Davide Rossello, Bobst Competence Center manager & R&D process manager, gravure, said the project began in 2019 when Esko was undertaking work in Extended Color Gamut printing in prepress. “In Bobst Italy we always manufacture gravure,” he said. “Ink control is the final step on this journey – but while this process began in prepress, it has now moved to the end of the printing process.
Simplifying color adjustment processes
“We were looking to introduce something new. Gravure is a stable technology with less variables compared to others and is always the reference point whenever comparing print quality results, and our focus is on delivering improvements in productivity, management and efficiency.”
Rossello explained that the fragmentation of orders, with the varying number of jobs and changeovers, means that gravure printers traditionally face challenges when changing the cylinder for each color, with the color adjustment process requiring a lot of time to achieve the highest quality.
“As Bobst did not have a color matching tool, it was left in the hands of the customer,” he said. “We decided to look at the setup time and say ‘ok, let’s simplify all our customers’ presses, and digitalize this process’. When printing in ECG, we knew we needed the optimal technology to check the print register so as to simplify color adjustment. We needed first class prepress color software, and faced the challenge of combining that in the machine, to fix the color in a proper way. This is where Esko enters the game.”
David Naisby, business development director with Esko, explained how the key technology in developing a solution was its AVT SpectraLab system – the market leading technology first launched in 2012, of which SpectraLab XF is the third and latest generation.
“This ISO certified measurement device took many years to refine. and today we are proud to be able to measure both media strip and within the printed image during press start-up and during the printing process,” said Naisby. “This is an enabling technology for any press manufacturer to take advantage of, and Bobst clearly understood how they could turn this into an advantage for their customers to improve productivity, reduce environmental impact and ultimately increase profit.”
The team at Bobst evaluated several technologies and determined that Esko had the full solution to address their technological needs. “Working together, the two companies’ R&D departments developed software that simplifies the operator interaction with the AVT SpectraLab XF and allows live density and color information to be displayed on the Bobst user interface,” said Naisby. “Testing during 2022 produced very good results and we are now able to match the readings from the press to the X-Rite eXact Spectrophotometer to be within one Delta E, the industry accepted tolerances.
“With the trend for shorter run lengths, color matching and the associated waste and time creates a major bottleneck which leads to unacceptable costs for the converter,” he said. “With smartGRAVURE, we have taken a major step forward with this solution.”
Bobst’s Davide Rossello added, “Essentially, Esko gave us the recipe for how we could digitally fix the color in the machine. As a result, we now have 100% control over what is happening in the press with smartGRAVURE. With this new tool, users can address any misregistration, tone value increase (TVI) differences and color control, all in line. Delta E tolerances are guaranteed, and it also enables the adjustment of process colors, which we can measure in case of any deviation, effectively closing the loop on color matching in the press itself.
“In terms of controlling production, this means that repeatability can be assured as everything is digitalized. The machine is now doing the adjustments to bring everything in line with the benchmark,” he said. “This is a new technology that can be implemented in a gravure press to give output for a customer that is fully controlled from the first meter to the last meter.”
Eliminating common bottlenecks
With around 50% of time spent on setup and 50% on production, the development experts at Esko and Bobst analyzed the data and determined where the bottlenecks in the gravure print process were.
“We recognized that the customer was spending anywhere from 45 minutes to two hours color matching,” added Rossello. “Obviously that’s a significant amount of time to lose. Because we are machine manufacturers, we never really looked at the chemical composition of the inks being used in spot colors. We have an excellent relationship with Esko and as we needed a partner from the prepress world, an expert in software, and preferably a solution that integrated with the Esko Automation Engine workflow solution to read both composition and color, it made perfect sense to work together.”
Esko was a key part of the project from day one – in fact, the first fingerprint was actually printed with an Esko logo. Esko’s David Naisby explained, “The dream of all converters is to be able to run a press automatically, without having to adjust color. With this partnership, we are proud to be able to empower operators to achieve their goal.
“The fundamental part of this process is the accurate measurement of color, as everything in the workflow depends upon this,” he said. “Secondly, the color data workflow has to be simplified. You cannot have press operators entering complex target density and color values press-side. To achieve this, the SpectraLab XF is connected to the X-Rite ColorCert product that resides in the Esko S2 cloud solution. Specific job color target information is sent to the press and sets up the SpectraLab XF automatically with the correct values for each printing unit.”
Measuring at high frequency during high production speeds, Esko’s AVT SpectraLab XF ensures perfect color matching and consistency to a brand’s specification, assisting in reducing waste by alerting for color density deviations and assisting operators to get back to needed color tolerances. With the new color control abilities from Bobst, this ability is translated into an automated closed loop color solution.
“Our first test was in 2019, and now we have it finally set up on a machine in our competence center,” added Davide. “In terms of the difference smartGRAVURE makes, it is simply better. It makes automatic adjustments, for the base and color extenders, to bring the color to the target density.
“In tests, 94.6% of the extended color gamut have been achieved using smartGRAVURE, with the lowest still an impressive 89%,” he said. “A range of 89-95% is surprisingly high, with only some very specialist colors missing.”
Ensure color quality, save time, reduce waste
“What until today has taken hours can now be significantly reduced to under 20 minutes, depending on the job and colors involved,” said Rossello. “To replace the cylinder, from the moment the machine stops, it is now just a few mechanical changes and we don’t have to wash anything. For a new job, color adjustment should not be needed so we can change the cylinder much faster and be back up and running on the new job in less than 20 minutes.”
David Naisby said that in terms of actual savings and benefits, the numbers are as impressive as they are staggering. “The increased efficiency means that idle time is reduced by as much as 70%, with what used to take 90 minutes or so reduced to less than a half an hour,” he said. “This clearly creates additional advantages in terms of the availability of presses and an overall improved productivity.”
In order to measure color, gravure operators need to print a test run – which involves starting and stopping several times as they achieve color matching speed, printing around 300-350 meters each time before testing and repeating until the color is perfect. “That’s a lot of printed material wasted, both in terms of substrate and ink, as well as energy and time used,” said David. “With smartGRAVURE, this can now all be achieved with one single stop and start, meaning as much as a 60% reduction in materials saved at the changeover.
“Not only does this deliver big benefits in terms of material gains, but it also further prevents wastage by enabling print customers to recognize a problem early in the run rather than when the whole reel is complete.”
In terms of color quality, Rossello explained that a Pantone validation test returned the first ‘Print totality of colors’ rating to ever be attained by a gravure printer. “This was in one run, on the RS 6003 press in our competence center, with 2,369 colors, where we achieved a 92.1% rating,” he said.
“With this new tool developed by Bobst and Esko, gravure printers can enjoy an end-to-end digitalized process – enabling them to meet and exceed the highest industry standards with ease.”
