http://www.printingtalk.com/news/kbn/kbn104.html

"According to Gay, prior to installing the Genius 52 UV, The Mallard Press operated a variety of high-speed digital copier machines and half-size offset sheetfed presses.Short-run colour work (producing from one to 500 pieces) was produced on the firm's Xerox Docucolor digital printer, whilst longer-run colour jobs (2,000 to 250,000 pieces) were produced on the firm's Komori five-colour and two-colour 28' half-size sheetfed presses.

Gay explained: 'It was the in-between work, from 500 to 2,000 pieces, where we needed to find an efficient solution.


We thought our growth would lead us to install a Xerox iGen3 with variable printing capability.

But two reasons swayed us away from the iGen.

They were cost and full colour variable printing.' He continued: 'Our analysis showed that it cost twice as much to produce 500,000 8' x 11' pieces on the iGen compared to equal volumes on the KBA Genius.

Additionally, we didn't feel that full colour variable printing would have enough solid growth compared to printing short run four-colour shells with mono variable imprints.

We feel that we can creatively design variable projects using our two-step approach that are more cost effective than the 100 per cent digital colour methods.' Gay's analysis also found that 50 per cent of the work the company was producing on the digital colour printer and 30 per cent of the work produced on the Komori offset presses would perfectly fit on the KBA Genius 52 UV press.

He added: 'Installing the Genius allows us to be more efficient.

We're able to capitalise in the growth of short-run quick-turn colour work along with the ability to print on any substrate.

The Genius gives us predictable consistent offset quality colour sheet after sheet no matter how much coverage is on the job."


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I just went to see the KBA press at PrintFest in Long Beach. I can say that I was duly impressed. I think that this press is extremely revolutionary. I think that this press is something that ALL "Digital"/"short run" printers absolutely need to look at. It can truly change the business model.
It would be great to get other feedback here, but what I see as the most revolutionary features are...

- Ease of use
I truly believe that this press is easier to run than ANY of the digital presses out there. Even though this press is not a digital press. That means almost anybody can be trained to run this press. It does not require an experienced press operator. I talked at length with the pressman at the show. He also was an experienced traditional pressman. He was also a trainer. I specifically drilled him on who can learn the press and he was emphatic that virtually anybody can learn to run it well. With automatic plate hangars and ejectors, there is not even an issue with hanging and tensioning plates. He said the the biggest issue with running the press was feeding the paper. In the same way that feeding paper on a traditiona press just takes experience of learning different stock characteristics.

- Speed: of make ready and turn over for second side:
I personally saw sheets come up to color in registration after a plate change in under 20 sheets. This makes the press a very viable solution for some extremely short runs. It even makes press proofs extremely viable. Also, because the inks are U.V. cured, you can immediately turn the sheet over and print the back side.

- No fiddling with Ink Water Balance
As a waterless press and UV curing, there is simply no messing with ink density. there is no need for color bars. No ink keys to mess with. No standing around with a customer who is trying to justify their job as "press checker" waiting for them to say "can you come up in the yellow just a little bit?..." If there are changes, go back to pre-press.

- No offset or ghosting
As a waterless UV press, many of the traditional problems in traditional litho are eliminated.

Questions that I could not get answered:
- Quality compared to other like presses
At the show, they were printing on plastic, so it is difficult to make a judgement as to how the quality would compare against another like formatted press. For example, if you had a 5 color GTO and the KBA press, which one can print the best quality for a standard 100# text coated stock with lots of coverage and highly detailed photographs? They said that it would run 300 line screen or stochastic, but would the UV inks make the "look" inferior to like printed pieces with traditional inks? It would be great to hear from people who have this experience. It would certainly be a downer if you did invest a lot of money in the new press and still had the guy down the street with his GTO show the customer a better looking sheet. While the benefits of speed and efficiency are great, customers are not happy to give up quality to get that. The only time that they are willing do give up quality is when they are "forced" to get it done faster etc. and nobody likes to be "forced" to take less quality. Now if you can match the quality AND give faster turn-around, then you have something that you can even charge more for. Customers don't necessarilly like that, but they are willing to do it because they acknowledge that you have invested and need to profit from that.

- Sheet thickness:
Certainly one of the other benefits of the KBA 52 UV is the wide range of stock that it can run. But there is something strange. In that, if you read the specs for the machine on the KBA site itself, the spec is to run maximum 14pt. But at the show they kept telling me that it would run 32pt. and in fact they were running some plastic that was much thicker than 14pt. So I don't know if you are "running the machine out of spec" when you run thicker than 14pt. or if the kba web site is just speaking of an older version that could only run 14pt.