Unlocking Potential with Baldwin: Recent Episodes
Baldwin Technology
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A perfect storm hit the paper market leading to worldwide shortages. Sky-high prices and procurement challenges, coupled with long-lead times for supplies, pose myriad issues. How can printers rise to the occasion? Unlocking Potential’s Tyler Kern reached out to some experts for advice. Thomas Torp, CEO of Grakom, Jonathan Fore, Commercial Lead, AMS, Spectral UV, and Carsten Barlebo, VP, International Sales, Baldwin, AMS, Spectral UV, shined a light on the problem, and some solutions printers can turn to alleviate the crisis.Inflation is a word all too familiar these days, but prices skyrocketed during the pandemic for the paper market.
And the critical factor driving these price hikes is a simple lack of paper availability. “It’s not possible for the printer companies to get the paper they need,” Torp said. And Fore added that even when printers can get their hands on paper, the prices are astronomical, and it’s expensive to ship and deliver it.One result of the pandemic is an increase in packaging demands which put additional pressure on a paper market that was in decline. Larger printers are grabbing all the paper they can because they have the facilities to store it. Much like the toilet paper shortages of 2020, this situation leaves many printers scavenging.
Indeed, the culmination of events created a tricky scenario for the printing industry. So, what can printers do?With paper in short supply and printers relegated to sometimes using what they have, printers need to add as much value as possible to their existing paper supply. LED-UV is one solution creating higher quality. “The benefit of LED is the cure is almost instantaneous,” Fore said. That fast curing means less bleeding of ink into uncoated stocks. “You have highly glossy inks that are laid down on top of the paper, and before they can be absorbed, they’re flash cured by the radiation light.”
LED UV curing is emerging as the gold standard in printing over the past decade due to the significant quality and process improvement it delivers. The technology provides all the advantages of traditional UV curing while providing solutions to many problems printers encounter with heat-set drying.
Tuck Tucker, President of Tucker Castleberry, and Kent Tucker, Vice President at Tucker Castleberry, joined Grieg Heimbuch, Director of Strategic Accounts at Baldwin Technology, to discuss their partnership.
Tucker Castleberry is an Atlanta, GA-based offset and digital printer serving commercial customers since 1949. Tucker Castleberry retrofitted its sheet-fed printing process in 2020 with Baldwin’s AMS Spectral UV, and they’ve knocked it out of the park ever since. So, why LED UV over standard print drying methods? Heimbuch said the answer was easy.
“Someone like Tucker Castleberry, they’re looking to get work through their plant faster,” Heimbuch said. “They’re looking to get work into the bindery quicker or turn it over and run it back through the press quicker. And LED curing allows you to do all those things. The work is quicker to revenue. You’re going to be able to bill that job quicker than you would if you didn’t have LED UV on the press.”
And a bonus for both the environment and the bottom line is LEDs’ quick drying process equals energy savings. There is also very little heat involved in the process. LED curing requires fewer lamps than standard UV drying processes. Less heat build-up in the stacks allows for instant handling by operators.
Kent Tucker added that the system prints a lot cleaner too. “Because the ink dries immediately, there’s a lot less dot gain. We’ve seen a cleaner print from our dots.” And he said the reduced heat emissions from the presses made a big difference in the comfort level of employees, especially during those hot Atlanta summer months.
What if printers and converters could eliminate downtime altogether? Some future day, right? Nope. The future is now thanks to Industry 4.0. Early adopters of the technology throughout in the graphics industry prove the unprecedented potential of unlocking the power of data at their fingertips. One of the industry innovators leading this transition is Baldwin Technology.
Its Industry 4.0 platform, AMP IoT, quickly connects the data from machines, accessories, MIS software and workflow to obtain a holistic view of production and overall equipment efficiency (OEE) regardless of the assets’ make, model or vintage.
Baldwin’s Steve Metcalf, Chief Marketing and IoT officer, and Jake Schwertel, Engineering Supervisor and Chief Technical Architect of the AMP IoT platform, gave host Tyler Kern the low down on this Industry 4.0 transformation. Metcalf said that a piece of production equipment often never reaches its full potential. Finding ways to reduce errors and increase usage can provide bottom-line benefits for many industries, not just graphics.“ Industry 4.0 has become popular in the last five-to-ten years, mostly as technology has advanced,” Schwertel said. “And it’s allowed us to gain access to all of the data of what’s going on, on the shop floor. Everything from like a print’s web speed to the curing power, and everything in between.” Utilizing this data creates the ability to calculate overall equipment efficiency across all assets in real time. Aggregating that data from production equipment and putting it into context to develop insights and action plans is what makes platforms like AMP IoT such a critical tool.
“What AMP as an IoT platform is doing is extracting that information and putting it into a meaningful context,” Metcalf said.
Film extruders increasingly recognized the benefits of investing in automation to replace the traditionally time-consuming process of cleaning chilled rollers and the disruption to production. But, from Baldwin’s experience, while extruders recognize the danger of manual cleaning, taking the proactive step to employ automation to prevent operator injury is not always a priority.
On this episode of Baldwin’s Unlocking Potential Podcast, Host Tyler Kern talked with Bob Baillargeon, Business Development Manager and Sales at Baldwin America. They talked about how Baldwin can help with automation, process improvement, and how automatic cleaning systems can consistently and efficiently clean film cylinders.
Many of the calls Baldwin receives for its automated film cylinder cleaner come urgently when film extruders are expected to react to such a tragedy, which is more common than many realize.
“At first, you wouldn’t think it’s dangerous, but when you go into these plants, and you actually see the extrusion lines, and you see the position these operators need to go into and how close they are to 500-degree dye,” Baillargeon said.
Baldwin offers an array of automation and process improvement technologies that help film extruders supply higher quality results faster and with increased safety.
Baldwin has been manufacturing surface cleaning technologies for decades in the print industry.
Film extruders increasingly recognized the benefits of investing in automation to replace the traditionally time-consuming process of cleaning chilled rollers and the disruption to production. But, from Baldwin’s experience, while extruders recognize the danger of manual cleaning, taking the proactive step to employ automation to prevent operator injury is not always a priority.
On this episode of Baldwin’s Unlocking Potential Podcast, Host Tyler Kern talked with Bob Baillargeon, Business Development Manager and Sales at Baldwin America. They talked about how Baldwin can help with automation, process improvement, and how automatic cleaning systems can consistently and efficiently clean film cylinders.
Many of the calls Baldwin receives for its automated film cylinder cleaner come urgently when film extruders are expected to react to such a tragedy, which is more common than many realize.
“At first, you wouldn’t think it’s dangerous, but when you go into these plants, and you actually see the extrusion lines, and you see the position these operators need to go into and how close they are to 500-degree dye,” Baillargeon said.
Baldwin offers an array of automation and process improvement technologies that help film extruders supply higher quality results faster and with increased safety.
Baldwin has been manufacturing surface cleaning technologies for decades in the print industry.
The textile industry’s history is tainted with a reputation of environmental pollution and waste. But as the industry moves towards a more sustainable future, Baldwin Technology champions that cause with solutions that can make sustainability a reality. Baldwin assists textile manufacturers, brands, and retailers in reaching their sustainability goals and enabling them to be responsible stewards of the planet. Rick Stanford, Baldwin’s Vice President of Global Business Development for Textile Technology, spoke about Baldwin’s precision spray systems for sustainable moisture and finishing chemistry in textile manufacturing.
Top of mind, Kern wanted to know if sustainability was just a buzzword around the textile industry or if there were serious efforts to reduce waste and conserve precious resources.
“Over the years, new buzzwords have come and gone, but sustainability in textiles is quite serious about achieving these goals,” Stanford said. “There’s several different types of sustainability's within textiles.” From fiber repurposing to water reduction to an overall reduction in the carbon footprint of the supply chain, all of these efforts are consumer-driven. The Millennial and Gen Z groups want sustainability in their products, and they are demanding brands change their practices.
Still, while consumers may want more sustainable products, they aren’t necessarily willing to pay for them. So, manufacturers need to find ways to be more sustainable and keep their costs down as well. With Baldwin’s cutting-edge spray technology so vital in offset printing, they began to explore other ways these solutions could help other industries. Stanford said textiles were a natural fit.
What we offer today is our TexCoat system, precision spray technology for apply different textile finishes, “Stanford said. This process is more efficient than previous methods, reduces water and chemical consumption and saves energy.”
The textile industry’s history is tainted with a reputation of environmental pollution and waste. But as the industry moves towards a more sustainable future, Baldwin Technology champions that cause with solutions that can make sustainability a reality. Baldwin assists textile manufacturers, brands, and retailers in reaching their sustainability goals and enabling them to be responsible stewards of the planet. Rick Stanford, Baldwin’s Vice President of Global Business Development for Textile Technology, spoke about Baldwin’s precision spray systems for sustainable moisture and finishing chemistry in textile manufacturing.
Top of mind, Kern wanted to know if sustainability was just a buzzword around the textile industry or if there were serious efforts to reduce waste and conserve precious resources.
“Over the years, new buzzwords have come and gone, but sustainability in textiles is quite serious about achieving these goals,” Stanford said. “There’s several different types of sustainability's within textiles.” From fiber repurposing to water reduction to an overall reduction in the carbon footprint of the supply chain, all of these efforts are consumer-driven. The Millennial and Gen Z groups want sustainability in their products, and they are demanding brands change their practices.
Still, while consumers may want more sustainable products, they aren’t necessarily willing to pay for them. So, manufacturers need to find ways to be more sustainable and keep their costs down as well. With Baldwin’s cutting-edge spray technology so vital in offset printing, they began to explore other ways these solutions could help other industries. Stanford said textiles were a natural fit.
What we offer today is our TexCoat system, precision spray technology for apply different textile finishes, “Stanford said. This process is more efficient than previous methods, reduces water and chemical consumption and saves energy.”
Printers and manufacturers worldwide use automatic cleaning systems to optimize productivity, worker safety and quality while decreasing their impact on the environment's cleaning process.
The innovations in cleaning technology and the consumables used in the process deliver ever-advancing value and advantages in these competitive environments.
Baldwin Technology brings more than 30 years of experience designing, building and installing automatic cleaning systems and consumables to these industries. Baldwin’s Walter Cano, Director of Product Development, Consumables, and Darren Andrews, Director of Aftermarket UK, Africa and Australia, lent their expertise to a recent discussion on automatic cleaning systems and consumables with Tyler Kern.
Both Cano and Andrews have extensive careers with Baldwin in developing and engineering printing solutions. They’ve seen firsthand the importance of meeting the needs of an ever-changing market.
“Keeping up with the global environment, the world we sit in, we have to be aware of our global footprint and constantly looking at that and new technologies all the time,” Andrews said. “We look at where we are now, and it’s a different world, but we’re moving with it.”
“Every year, new presses are faster; they run faster and hotter,” Cano said. “We are forced to change our systems accordingly—our wash programs, the types of solvents we utilize, the types of media we utilize. Carbon footprint is one of our major advantages over any other competitor. We’re already the originators of this technology, and substantially the amount that we minimize the carbon footprint on these printers, so we’ve evolved in a way to meet today’s challenges.”
But, as Cano pointed out, Baldwin was well ahead of these challenges and environmental concerns for years.
John Cusack, Business Development Manager for Defect Detection Systems at Baldwin Vision Systems, talked about the future of 100% inspection in the printing industry. Cusack’s involvement in the inspection world dates back 20 years.
Corrugated production is in high demand. As operators look to become more productive and efficient, they need new solutions. Discussing the industry and innovation, Unlocking Potential featured Baldwin Technology sales leaders Lee Simmons and Myles Le-Monte Shepherd.
AMS Spectral UV, a Baldwin Technology Company, manufactures high-power and versatile LED-UV, UV, and IR systems. Many industries use these systems to cure or dry inks, coatings, finishes, treatments, adhesives, and polymers. AMS Spectral UV’s, Michael Derrick, Director of Operations, and Hans Ulland, Executive Vice President, AMS Spectral UV, provided their insights on the latest innovations and trends in LED-UV curing.
Security printing is becoming increasingly state-of-the-art with new techniques and technologies – but so, too, is counterfeiting. Because of those and other challenges, security printers must constantly stay on top of the latest to make sure they’re serving their customers and making the printing process airtight.
That’s not necessarily a bad thing, said Gerry Stanford, Baldwin Vision System Global Sales Leader, who gets joy out of the tinkering process and making sure Baldwin is meeting its customers’ expectations.
Baldwin launched its new industry podcast, Unlocking Potential, which will focus on printing and industrial process automation and enhancement. Host Tyler Kern chatted with Baldwin’s COO Peter Hultberg and CMO and IoT Officer, Steve Metcalf, to give listeners insight into Baldwin’s history and evolution.