Speedmaster CD 74 - User Report: Haletra

Striving for maximum quality

50 years of experience, fully equipped digital prepress, 35 Heidelberg printing units in all format ranges and complete finishing are the basis of the full service offer of the print shop Haletra in Belgium. Even Dutch and German customers place their orders ranging from business cards and labels up to A1 posters with the Belgian high-quality print shop.

Using the latest technology for the profitable production of 12,000 high quality jobs per year is very important at Haletra. In August 2006 Kurt Paredis, Technical Manager of Haletra, has therefore integrated one of the first Speedmaster CD 74 presses with the speed option of 18,000 sheets per hour in his networked print shop.

The press is equipped with the new suction head und new sheet delivery functionalities to support stable production conditions. Both features, the suction head as well as the dynamic sheet brake with the delivery air system reduce makeready times to a minimum. 

When entering the printing stock data at the press control console Prinect CP2000 Center, carrier and separating air at the suction head are automatically adjusted on the basis of characteristic curves. The new lifting sucker concept transfers the stock safely onto the feed table. Manual adjustments are no longer required at this end.

The combination of the dynamic sheet brake and the delivery air system makes for makeready speeds of 15,000 sheets per hour at Haletra and for production the press immediately speeds up to 18,000 sheets per hour. Installing and removing the six braking modules is done very quickly. The 18 fans in the delivery are perfectly arranged and can be adapted exactly to the paper format. Achieving a perfectly aligned delivery pile also with thin stocks for fast and easy finishing is supported by the possibility of adapting the amount of air to the size and type of stock.

About his experience with the delivery, Kurt Paredis says: "It's better than we expected. Only the new functionalities make it possible to run the press at 18,000 and produce an average of 15 to 16 jobs per day in two shifts."

Haletra runs a total of 17 printing units of Speedmaster CD 74. The previous Speedmaster CD 74 was replaced after 80 million impressions for the only reason of achieving shorter production times through higher productivity at 18,000 sheets per hour with the new Speedmaster CD 74.