Issue link: https://nbm.uberflip.com/i/1451361
G R A PH I C S - PR O.C O M 2 0 2 2 A P R I L G R A P H I C S P R O 1 7 "As a manufacturer, we're always look- ing for ways we can improve that time to market for customers, reduce touchpoints so that you can improve on automation," Hutcheson says. "Presses just continue to get faster, which adds more and more bot- tlenecks. A lot of bottlenecks today are on the nishing side. Finishing manufacturers are looking at ways to improve their pro- ductivity because as presses get faster, the goal is to get o the press to the next step. You don't want to lose the time you gained." Larry D'Amico, Durst Image Technol- ogy U.S., says his company's one pass tech- nology is highly automated. For companies in the corrugated segment, they are mov- ing corrugated sheets to the press with no manual intervention, using conveyors. Ev- erything is computerized. e company's presses can print 3,000-4,000 sheets per hour because of their level of automation. "We have people moving stacks, ipping stacks, jogging and aerating stacks, moving to the printer and to the cutting device with nobody touching it," he notes. "It is incredible to see." Fujilm's high production presses can save job settings, and if a shop has clients that use them on a weekly, monthly, or seasonal basis, the operator can set those jobs up using saved settings, including the type of media used, sheet size and thickness. e machine will call up all that information, which helpful with the issues of labor shortage and turnover. Fujilm's Onset atbed printer has a ro- botic handling system that ooads onto a conveyor belt to take projects to the digi- tal cutting system. It will also ip media when necessary, eliminating the need for an operator to intervene. Job setup has always taken a lot of time, and Fujilm has worked on automating just about every part of the printing pro- cess, including a vacuum bed that adjusts to reect the sheet size so there is correct spacing between the sheet and the print head for best image quality. e high pro- duction machines are also set up to auto- matically clean the print heads between jobs, which saves time. Flexi DESIGN for macOS ® NEW The leading software for sign and print design is now available for macOS ® Subscribe today at ThinkSAi.com Learn more about FlexiDESIGN for macOS ® visit bit.ly/flexi-mac