manroland's DirectDrive Demonstrates 'State of the Art' at Open House

WESTMONT, IL—07/15/09—Since manroland introduced the DirectDrive press at drupa in 2008, there has been growing interest from printers wanting to get a look at and learn more about this extraordinary 40-inch press. That was the case on June 24 at the company’s Print Technology Center in suburban Chicago when printers had the opportunity to see a live demonstration of the Roland 700 DirectDrive.

Printers were invited to see how the DirectDrive press is ideal for short-run, high performance work, or for those who use long perfectors with 8, 10 or 12 units and do a substantial amount of perfecting jobs. With plate changing and wash-up occurring simultaneously, no other 40-inch press on the market can boast of these multi-tasking options. During the live demonstration, the DirectDrive ran five different jobs in under 44 minutes.

Technology is the first thought of the DirectDrive, which has the capability of changing print length electronically during production. This means no wasting time to change packing or making prepress adjustments for perfect register and the DirectDrive can adjust the start of print on the sheet up to 99 millimetres (3.89 inches). Inking units can also be disengaged during production and it takes no time to change plates and get up to color.

Craig Krone and Rich Szolwinski are two print executives who were in attendance that day. Krone is VP - Disruptive Technologies, for The Occasions Group of North Mankato, Minnesota, which is a division of the Taylor Corporation. Szolwinski is the Director of Manufacturing at Milwaukee’s Kubin-Nicholson, which handles both digital and litho commercial printing as well as out-of-home and environmental large format work. Both said the open house program was well worth their time.

“manroland is one of our current partners and I saw the DirectDrive prototype press in Germany prior to its introduction at drupa,” said Krone. “We are always looking for opportunities to improve our manufacturing capabilities and this press has most certainly lived up to its reputation as a high-speed makeready machine. As a former pressman, I know makeready is the name of the game. It was very impressive with how fast you can change plates, clean the blankets and go from straight printing to perfecting. We are considering the DirectDrive as we have several operations that run large format work.”

Szolwinski maintains a strong interest in advanced printing technologies and large format printing. The event provided him the chance for the first time to see manroland’s Print Technology Center and the Roland 900 press. What attracted his attention was the capability and technology of the Roland 700 DirectDrive.

“It was my first visit to Westmont and we liked what we saw with all of the plate changes during the live demonstration,” said Szolwinski, who attended with Scott Anders, Kubin-Nicholson’s Technical Director. “The DirectDrive press is perfect for short runs and we were interested in seeing it because that’s the kind of work we do. We were impressed with how fast it got up to color and into registration.”

About manroland Inc.
manroland Inc., a division of manroland AG, is the world’s second largest printing systems manufacturer and the world’s market leader in web offset. manroland employs almost 8,700 people and has annual sales of some Euro 1.7 billion with an export share of almost 80%. Web and sheetfed offset presses provide solutions for publishing, commercial and packaging printing. For more information visit the web site at www.manroland.us.com.