Recent content by JPK

I am relatively young in the industry (mid-30s) yet all around I read the phrase “Print is dead” and if you grew up in this industry like me, it hurts. But I will not deny it, I hear about it every day at my job: Offset printers are closing at an alarming rate in most markets. Print-shop after...

"Not excellence like Heidelberg but good product" Luckily I had put down my coffee before reading that. Heidelberg is the General Motors of the machine world, they are only alive because they were "too big to fail" and the German government gave them loads of cash. Dirty little secret for...

Regarding offset Regarding offset I think traditional offset in the developed world (USA, Canada, Western Europe, Japan and Australia) will lose ground to digital printers at an accelerated rate. Unless someone comes quickly with a "digital" plate cylinder that does not need plates anymore but...

I am an ink and coatings supplier that imports mostly European brands. I have a customer that does a lot of offline UV coating for sheetfed printed products using an old Roland 600 coupled with a Steineman UV dryer. A few weeks ago his machine almost caught fire for no apparent reason...

My first advice would be to stir the AQ coating really thoroughly, preferably with some mechanical mixer. Sedimentation is a big problem in any AQ coating, and specially one this old. My other advice would be to try to use as few IR drying as possible, with as much hot air as possible in the...

D Ink Man has a point.... actually, I do know from an insider in Germany why Heidelberg got into looking for the "perfect" ink for its XL105, and the reason is that the rollers of the XL 105 are flawed: Their average diameter when you compare them to the rollers of other manufacturers is...

In terms of technology and for a B1 format KBAs have been on the top for many, many years. Some of the tech advantages of KBA over the other guys are: -Universal grippers (forget about adjusting grippers whenever you change stock.... + they have a self cleaning effect whenever they open and...

Ernie, check the mileage (impressions) on both. The Akiyama might be less robust than the KBA. KBA RA 104s are basically from the "Planeta" era, and those machines were built like tanks and will last many years. Not many people know it but the RA 104 was pretty much kicking Heidi's 102 CD and...

Good luck on that Mr. Rautert, specially after having to beg for 800 milion Euros to the German government to stay afloat last August. In Germany some people are calling Heidi "the GM of printing".