Maintenance Relief

With no gears to wear down or adjust, gearless presses help reduce maintenance in the printing process.

PRESS MAINTENANCE IS a four-letter word. It's essential for high-quality printing results, but the more time a printer spends on maintaining the condition of its equipment, the less time it spends printing—meaning lost profits.

There may be an answer to the evils of maintenance, however, for those companies willing and able to front a hefty capital investment. Gearless presses, driven by servo-motor technology, hit the market about 10 years ago, boasting such advantages over conventional presses as infinite repeat sizes, easier registration, and improved quality control with the ability to automatically pre-register print sleeves, said Steven Leibin, sales manager for Matik North America (distributor of OMET's gearless press).

Maintenance sch-maintenance

Low required maintenance is another benefit of direct drive presses that few manufacturers have failed to promote. Conventional presses have gears, hubs, and clutches that wear with time and need frequent tinkering. And even the presses that run with some servo-drive technology but also have gears, need maintenance. True gearless presses don't have these mechanical parts and, therefore, don't need as much attention, said Chris Delwiche, Paper Converting Machine Co.'s (PCMC) supervisor of design and support.

"Gears, hubs, and clutches are maintenance items," he said. "They simply wear over time. Their degradation correlates with the machine's print quality degradation. Often, maintenance teams will spend countless hours chasing machine performance issues, only to find out a gear is worn or damaged. Replacing and repairing these parts is a never-ending cycle."

Even so, what replaces those old, familiar mechanical components in gearless presses can be somewhat scarier than the idea of endless fiddling and compensating for worn out parts. On a gearless press, the large bull gear and conventional plate cylinder drive gears found in a conventional press are replaced with servo-drive technology—a system of hi-tech electronics, software, and computer systems.

This may sound daunting, but it makes operation simple, said John Melotik of North American Cerutti. "With far less mechanical parts to wear or cause an issue, the gearless presses rely more on software, which does not wear out," he said. "More than that, today with gearless we are printing by the numbers. Digital drives and numerical controllers have replaced that special 'craft' or 'tweeking' used by many operators to set machines."

However, most press operators have spent years learning the ins and outs of a conventional press and the maintenance of a gearless press can be discouraging when considering the possibility of having to handle electronic woes.

"These servo drives are extremely reliable, but if they do go wrong, a trained electronics technician is needed for repairs—although this is not really an issue as all presses today are based on electronics with digital drives, PLCs (programmable logic controllers), and complex computer-based control systems. So just about all companies who have bought new equipment of any type over the last 10 years have had to add these specialists to their staff," said Hans Deamer, president of Windmoeller & Hoelscher.

In most cases, diagnosing a problem in a gearless press is as easy as hooking it up to a computer, Deamer said. Many gearless press manufacturers offer round-the-clock customer service over the Internet. Once the press has been connected to a PC, all a technician has to do is follow simple instructions. "All high-quality, direct-drive presses have simple-to-use and extensive self-diagnostic capabilities which, using built-in modems, allow easy and fast troubleshooting by direct connection to the press manufacturer's engineers who can—from thousands of miles away—see exactly what is happening in the machine, right down to the individual signals in each PLC and each component; hence, [they can] precisely guide the customer's technician in fault resolution," he said.

And fortunately, said Melotik, most repairs are minor. "Most repairs today are the changing of circuit boards, changing drive cards, or resetting breakers," he said.

In spite of the overt benefits, acceptance of the technology has come mostly through experience with it—a lot like the replacement of typewriters with computers, Leibin said. "Office workers were skeptical of this new technology," he said. "Eventually, as people tried the new computer word processors, they liked the new technology, and it made them more productive. The same forces are occurring now in the converting business with gearless presses vs. traditional geared presses."

Talking price

The benefits of gearless presses are plenty, but costly. A gearless press costs about 20-25 percent more than a conventional press. However, said Terry Trexler, Gallus product manager, "In my mind, servo technology is cheaper."

While the press itself costs more, the machine has the ability to save time and money with its automatic register control and pre-setting abilities. The press also has flying-imprint capability, allowing the press to run at full speed while the operator switches print jobs at the push of a button. The increase in productivity is significant with this feature. "The throughput you get with servo technology more than pays for the press," Trexler said.

But still, the deciding factor is often price. "The only disadvantage I can think of is price and, unfortunately, this is a big one," said Jose Santiago, managing director of Comexi America. "The price has come down significantly as the technology has evolved, but to a customer who is buying on price alone, it can be a major hurdle."

Optimism still reigns, however. Notwithstanding price and complex electronics, gearless presses have sold well in the past few years and industry suppliers expect them to takeover marketshare in the near future. Deamer said, "We at Windmoeller & Hoelscher believe that within three years or so, no more conventional geared CI presses will be sold—all will be direct drive."

Deamer's not alone in this opinion. "Eventually all presses will be gearless and shaftless (currently 95 percent of all wide-web flexo presses sold are gearless)," Leibin said. "Gearless presses are the newest tool to make printers more productive and they will revolutionize the industry."

By Kate Sharon -Associate Editor