Full process reliability in all printing tasks: Flexible, adaptive inspection system offers innovative assistance systems for quality assurance
Challenging print jobs are today placing increasing demands on process control under tight budgets. Adaptive inspection systems ensure the quality of the print throughout the process and enhance the productivity of printing presses. With improved performance and reliability, they are now even easier to use than ever. State-of-the-art assistance systems detect all typical print defects – such as splashes, missing print, color or register defects or critical hazing and support the printer's work in all processes.
Every printing process is different, and each of them has particular requirements for inspection, be it splashes, missing printing ink, or register or lamination defects. One challenge, for example, are the streaks in the direction of movement in textured areas such as barcodes, which typically occur in gravure. Traditional inspection systems cannot detect these defects reliably. With Advanced Streak Detection and its intelligent Smash Web Processor 2, ISRA's PrintSTAR has been further developed to provide a reliable, software-based solution to this problem.
PrintSTAR can now also detect hazing, which impairs the quality, reliably with its new hardware-based Advanced Hazing Detection assistant. An additional bank of cameras enables the color hazing to be detected on a transparent substrate across the entire web width, even during the printing process. In the past, these defects were often not noticed until the material went for further processing. In the worst case scenario, the customer was the first to notice them, filing a complaint.
The improved, touch-sensitive user interface modeled on Windows 10 makes the various assistance systems easier to use. The integrated ColorWatch system uses inline color monitoring to enable adherence to target values (reference values) specified by the customer. QuickProof compares the printed image with the reference printing file (PDF comparison) before the start of goods production, preventing unnecessary rejection rates and additional work.
PrintTrack monitors the correct repeat length. In doing so, artifacts (pseudo defects) resulting from the web movement, changed web tension or inhomogeneities in the substrate can be reliably ruled out by compensation algorithms. It is a similar story with RegisterCheck, which differentiates between tolerable and impermissible register deviations.
In its print inspection, ISRA continues to rely on efficient line cameras, which have proven their effectiveness in other industries and enable high quality even at high web speeds, and on frame grabbers, which are constantly being further developed. Each camera has its own image processor, which can capture data streams of up to 3000 Mbit/s and process them in parallel. A LED-based lighting technology here allows a brightness range that can be dimmed between 20 and 120 percent and requires minimal maintenance. This makes PrintSTAR an efficient and adaptive inspection partner in scalable printing processes.
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