Magnus Platesetter

[RGPW17100]

Anybody using one of these? I am curious about your press operators feelings about plate repeatability. Every plate we hang we have to move at least 2 colors a significant amount. Not sure what the measurement increments are but it is at least 25 on two plates. We used to have a Mako 2 that the operator had to hold the plate to the pins and get a green light then the plate would image. That was a much more accurate system. Seems to me the Magnus punches the plates but does not use the punches for registration when imaging the plate. Just curious if anyone else has feedback on this.

 

[Internal_R&D_Analyst]

We just have one of the 400's but a couple of the 800's. I have not worked with the 400 but the 800's seam to be right on without any issues. Actually the 400 is being upgraded to a fully automatic from semiautomatic to accommodate a new press, I should make some time to get to that plant and see it.

 

[dwanehollands]

Ok,

Totally know what you're talking about.

We've got a magnus 400 aswell. you are correct in that the magnus does not mount on the punched notches. The reason you have to move it significantly is that your system is based on edge detection. The plate is centred, punched, then loaded onto the drum.

But not onto pins as would be ideal. The edge of the plate is detected and "x" amount in from the edge the imaging begins. If the centering is not perfect or if the size of the plate size varies slightly you get poor position repeatability.

As a result of this we were doing offline punching. However kodak has a soultion where they install a centre punch and a centre pin on the drum.

The results are extremely consistent now.

 

[RGPW17100]

So you found the offline punching to be more accurate? Because to the economy we cant have an upgrade done to the machine but we have the original punch that came with the press. I will see if one of our prepress people know how to turn the punches off and try doing that way. We sure waste a lot of stock this way.

 

[dwanehollands]

RGPW17100,

I forgot to mention when we did the offline punching it was Video Plate Punching. (I created the last post on my new ipod which took me 20 minutes to type it. It's a slow way of posting)

How old is your machine? We would have had our machine 12 months by January 2009. It was included in our service contract. You might want to check if it's in yours aswell. (didn't cost us anything).

It really was the smallest thing too. A punch motor and a single pin that is put on the drum. Took the technician a few hours to install and get it lined up perfectly.

I guess it really depends on how much stock you're wasting and whether you can get a good ROI for the cost of the new centre punch system. Couldn't hurt to get a quote even if your not under service contract.

 

[RGPW17100]

Dwane. Thanks for the replies. Kodak actually saw this thread and contacted me at work (Good Idea to have your profile filled out ) They are working with me to possibly have the modification done to my Magnus 400 pro bono. This machine is about two years old and I am impressed by Kodak doing this. I will follow up on it when more testing has been done.

 

[dwanehollands]

RGPW17100,

Great to hear! Yeah that's a good reason to have your profile info up to date, hey!

 

[Zvi Krams]

The problem described should not be considered as normal - the registration system's job is to ensure register on press. If it's not doing that, there's something wrong (probably something simple in this case). This is something that our service teams can fix. Thanks RGPW17100 for mentioning your concern, and I'm glad to hear that our technical team has already contacted you and is working to resolve it. Please let me know directly (by email – [email protected]) if our service team is unable to solve this problem adequately.

 

[RGPW17100]

Zvi Krams

Thank you for all your help. Kodak was in today and are adding the modification. Could be done as early as tomorrow. The technician feels this will solve my problems. I guess because of the age of our machine it already has the hole in the drum needed for the modification so the install should be a piece of cake for the tech. I will follow up in a week or so to let you know how the improvement is working out for us.

 

[RGPW17100]

Modification is done and it makes a big difference on registration. We can almost run all of our jobs now without making registration adjustments. Thanks for the help of the people on this site and especially Kodak for doing this upgrade for us.

 

[Shurup]

RGPW17100

I have some questions to you on this issue in PM. Will you please reply if possible.

 

[PACH]

Shurup,
Do you have questions regarding Prev. Maintenance?

 

[Shurup]

Actually, yes. I'm about to ask my local Kodak dealer to make the same upgrade on my Magnus 400Q, and a want to find out the estimate price and part numbers for it before making an official inquiry. If you have any information, I'll be very appreciate for any info

 

[PACH]

Are you getting the same intermittent missregistration on your Quantum also? I think your best bet is deffinetly to go via your Kodak to have the upgrade done. The will be able to tell you the cost and when they will be able to do it for you. Good luck with it.
By the way, The M400Q is a very good and fast plate setter.

 

[Shurup]

Yes, we have same problem with missregistration and it really a big problem now for our pressmanager, because we've just bought 5/5. I've asked my local supplier about this problem - his advice was to "line up a pile of plates in MCU more carefully", so I'd like to find out the part number for this upgrade or it's correct "name" and send an official request for it to my local Kodak supplier.

 

[PACH]

What you need is a the "Centre Punch " upgrade for a Magnus400Q. If you already have the slot to take the new pin on the drum the drum will not have to be drilled, making the installation faster. When the hardware is installed , the engineer will have to disable the Edge Detection in Service Shell, so the exposure will be image to punch.