HP has unveiled a new level of innovation for corrugated printing on the HP PageWide C500 Press to help accelerate growth in the digital corrugated printing market through high productivity and lower costs. The enhanced feeding system, now rolling out at PageWide C500 customers, has received several industry innovation awards.
The new feeder is a robust production solution designed to improve converters operating profit and reduce waste. It supports a wider range of sheets, including microflute, while maintaining a smooth feeding process and fast job changeovers.
PRINTING United Alliance has awarded the feeder with a 2021 Pinnacle InterTech Award for technology innovation. At SuperCorrExpo, the development won second place at the AICC/BCN/CT Innovator of the Year competition in the Machinery category.
The BoxMaker, a US packaging provider that recently purchased a second C500 for its new site, is already operating the new feeding technology. “Like most converters in the industry, we need to handle different varieties of stacks that arrive at our plant,” said Richard Brown, President and CEO, The BoxMaker. “With the HP PageWide C500 top feeder’s latest enhancements, we successfully handle many sheets and stacks that previously had to be disqualified due to their condition. This allows less waste, fast time to market and better utilization of our operators’ time – not only that the automatic stack replacement time has been reduced, but also there are fewer interventions due to quality and alignment of sheets.”
ICO of Italy has also made the upgrade. “After successfully installing the HP PageWide C500 top feeder latest enhancement, our stack replacement time has reduced to a minimum, which saves valuable time, money and labour,” said Michele Mastromatteo, R&D Manager, ICO, Italy. “With this upgrade, machine availability and uptime have significantly increased and allow us to convert additional volumes from our flexo line.”
The feeding enhancements include:
- Stack Topography Alignment to automatically compensate for uneven or warped stacks;
- Dynamic Stack Alignment technology to overcome vertically unaligned stacks;
- Smart Auto Recovery technology to identify and overcome feeding problems related to bad stacking or damaged sheets, avoiding operator’s manual intervention;
- A wider range of applications with microflute.
“HP has invested substantially in the feeder as part of its ongoing commitment to the corrugated market and will continue to develop this game-changing industry technology,” David Tomer, General Manager, HP PageWide Corrugated, Post-Print.
