LAUSANNE, Switzerland,
Dec. 20, 2010
(Press Release) -
At its week long COMPETENCE '10 open house BOBST premiered MASTERFOIL 106 PR, a hot-foil stamping press delivering previously unheard-of levels of precision and quality, combined with exceptional productivity and great ease of use. The MASTERFOIL 106 PR incorporates a number of pioneering innovations in the field of hot-foil stamping.
The MASTERFOIL 106 PR made its world première at Bobst Group's week-long COMPETENCE '10 open house at the end of September, an event which attracted more than 2,000 visitors from all over the world to Bobst Group's corporate headquarters in Lausanne, Switzerland. With an output of 8,000 sheets per hours, the high performance MASTERFOIL 106 PR incorporates a number of pioneering innovations in the field of hot-foil stamping on to paper, carton board, and micro-flute corrugated board. The most important among these innovations are a completely new Foil Touch platen concept, an intelligent Smart Feeder system, a dynamic Power Register II foil-to-print register system, an automatic Easy Foil handling system, and a new and highly ergonomic machine layout.
When the machine was presented at COMPETENCE '10, Sylvain Rebet, Head of Sales and Marketing for BOBST hot foil stamping presses, said "In response to market developments and the constantly increasing cost demands on foil stamping, there is pressure to use lighter and lighter substrates. Meanwhile, foils are also getting thinner. These two factors combine to make life very difficult for foil stamping presses. In addition, the layouts of printed materials are getting more and more challenging and complex. All in all, foil stamping presses have had to meet higher and higher standards of flexibility and quality over the years. We developed the MASTERFOIL 106 PR as a precision machine for the IIIb format, meeting the highest standards in foil stamping and offering a range of options for the future. In short, the MASTERFOIL 106 PR completes our portfolio at the top end, and with it we are staking our claim to be the pioneer in foil stamping."
The highlight of the new machine's design is a revolutionary system called Foil Touch. This system incorporates a completely new approach to the design of the lower platen section of a hot foil stamping press, delivering 50% more contact time between the foil and the sheet than any other machine in the market, even at the highest speeds. This in turn delivers outstanding results for all types of foil transfer - simple foil stamping, foil stamping combined with embossing, large area foil stamping, or fine detail foiling. This revolutionary development, means that despite using lower temperatures and reduced stamping pressures, the fast running MASTERFOIL 106 PR delivers astonishing results, while its speed and its ability to run in one pass work that would otherwise require two or more, ensures superbly high productivity.
The MASTERFOIL 106 PR also has another unique selling point - foils can now be stamped starting at just 13 mm from the front edge of the sheet.
Whether users are running paper, carton, or micro-flute corrugated board, the MASTERFOIL 106 PR features the first ever Smart Feeder available on a hot foil stamping press, which guarantees perfect sheet feeding for all sizes up to the press maximum of 1,060 x 760 mm. Smart Feeder gives the MASTERFOIL 106 PR particular abilities when handling lightweight papers, from 70 g/m2 upwards, as well as carton board up to 2,000 g/m2. The machine can also effortlessly handle corrugated board up to 2 mm. Combining intelligent sheet orientation with Power Register II dynamic foil-to-print registration, the Smart Feeder system can reduce the number of feed related jams by up to 70% when compared to conventional sheet feeders. The dynamic Power Register II system guarantees perfect register between the printed image and the foil. The system measures the positions of the printed images using powerful cameras, correcting the sheets automatically as they move, without stopping and without mechanical guides - making the system ideal for lightweight and/or sensitive substrates. Together the Smart Feeder and the Power Register II on the MASTERFOIL 106 PR support maximum precision and productivity in foil stamping.
A further innovation in sheet feeding is the automatic, and very importantly direct, build-up of pressure. This means the first sheet can be fed into the stamping platen without the operator needing to stop and wait for the correct stamping pressure.
Last, but not least, the BOBST MASTERFOIL 106 PR brings dramatically reduced setup times to hot foil stamping thanks to advances such as its innovative Easy Foil automatic foil handling system. After a new roll is added, the foil enters a vacuum chamber from where it is automatically pulled through the entire machine. With such technology the MASTERFOIL 106 PR has reduced setup times regarding the foil introduction part alone by up to 40%.
From sheet feed to output tray, the MASTERFOIL 106 PR has 360° operability, with touch screens arranged around the machine contributing to the productivity of the system.
The MASTERFOIL 106 PR is packed full of intelligent functions and patents, decisively breaking the boundaries of foil stamping in terms of flexibility, quality, and productivity. At COMPETENCE '10, the performance of the new machine was tested with an extremely challenging job in which a single sheet had very large areas of light embossing with some microstructures, combined with large foil transfers and deeper embossing to depths of up to 2.5 mm. This job alone - which was completed in a single pass using just 80% of the available stamping pressure - made it clear that foil stamping has entered a new era with the MASTERFOIL 106 PR.
