UNDER THE HOOD / IGS TITANIUM 0912 39 www.printmonthly.co.uk September / October 2023 - Issue 344 ▲ The basic design of the machine features a well-constructed honeycomb vacuum base made of aircraftgrade aluminium Cutting and creasing used to be a time consuming and labour intensive post-print production process. It is integral for several of the products we require, but the time to produce dies or formes and the need to quite often move the product between different machines for different applications, made the possibility of small batch or prototyping very prohibitive. As with everything in our industry, time and technology moves on, maybe not in line with Moore’s law used in computing meaning computers double in speed every two years, but certainly to the point that manufacturing equipment we dreamed of having is now readily available. This is true very much so in post-production equipment where today you can get machinery that not only bundles several processes into one device, and the computer software being able to drive the equipment makes the preparation and processing of even one-off production, commonplace. So, where does the Titanium 0912 from International Graphic Supplies (IGS) fit in? IGS is a UK-based supplier of CtP and post-press equipment and is the agent for one of China’s largest manufacturers of cut and crease machines, JWEI. Whilst JWEI may not be a common name in the UK, it certainly is in China where it has built a very strong reputation for equipment. Starting in 1993 as the JINGWEI Shoesoft company, within five years the JWEI software and cutter/plotters had established the company with a 90% share of shoe production equipment in China. Over the years that followed, the company branched out adapting the JWEI digital cutting tables for a number of other industries such as automotive interiors, clothing, signage, and quite naturally the graphics industry. By 2013, the company had expanded to produce its own high-specification integrated circuit controllers that drive the JWEI packaging software and has a vast range of flatbed cutting and creasing machinery which is cable of coping with almost anything you could consider. Simultaneous Operations We have chosen to take a look at the Titanium 0912 because it is the latest of eight Titanium products that IGS can supply. It is a B1 cutting and creasing device which is manufactured by JWEI consisting of a cutting head grouping a series of cutters and creasing heads for a large number of finishing operations in one pass. The basic design of the machine is as would be expected for a device of this nature, a well-constructed honeycomb vacuum base made of aircraft-grade aluminium. A series of holes providing four vacuum zones each independently controlled by a strong suction system ensure even the heaviest or lightest materials are secured firmly, vital for keeping the cutting accuracy to the claimed +/-0.1mm. As would be expected, the key ability to complete the desired tasks on the machine has its success based in the design of the over arch carrying the cutting head itself. The IGS Titanium 0912 has a solid frame carrying a series of linear bearings allowing the cutting head to move effortlessly from side to side, positioning the required cutter in the same place every time. The drive itself is of a synchronous belt design which means there is no opportunity for the head to be mis-positioned and the belts themselves are driven by accurate servo drivers which are needed for both the acceleration and speed of 1,500mm/sec traversing and 1,200mm/sec cutting. There are four tools in the cutting head itself: an electric oscillating tool, creasing wheel, and press and cut, and passive EFFORTLESS CUTTING JWSPS packaging software provides a completely integrated planning and product solution from a library of over 1,000 templates IGS has available an exciting B1 cutting and creasing machine in the Titanium 0912. Brian Sims takes a look at how this could benefit your business should short-run length or prototyping production be your requirement
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