V-TAB Landvetter DCOS Retrofit

V-TAB LANDVETTER turns to DCOS for their second retrofit project

KINNA, May 22, 2019 – The V-TAB group with headquarters in Göteborg, Sweden, is a major player for printed media in Nordic countries. With Newspapers, Inserts, Magazines and other Commercial products and a total of four coldest printing plants across in the south of Sweden, newspaper production is their largest business.

In 2010 V-TAB made a large investment in building a new printing facility in Landvetter Sweden. A used manroland Colorman press (originally from Stockholm) was purchased, refurbished and installed, including a press control system Retrofit and a conversion to shaftless by the German company EAE.

In 2016, V-TAB saw the emerging need to address the increasing print quality challenges on its 9-cylinder Colorman satellite units. At the same time V-TAB shuttered its printing plant in Örebro which had three Koenig & Bauer (K&B) Commander satellite towers in good condition.

In the end of March 2017, things became more critical and V-TAB reached out to DCOS and asked for urgent assistance in their retrofit project. The first K&B tower was mechanically installed and ready for electrical retrofit and installation with the intent to commission in early summer. Question was placed if DCOS could manage the project in the given short time frame.

After two weeks of intensive technical study and negotiations, the contract was signed and DCOS immediately assigned an engineering team to the project.

“This is the first time we experienced executing a project this size in such short notice. It´s obviously a huge challenge and the close proximity to V-TAB Landvetter was important. Four weeks after the contract signing, we started retrofitting hardware on the tower and another 4 weeks later we were running”, says Mattias Andersson, managing director at DCOS.

Since the project began in April 2017 two identical towers have been installed, retrofitted and commissioned. In the next weeks the third and last tower will be commissioned. In addition, V-TAB also decided to invest in DCOS Closed-Loop Density, Register and Cut-off control for the three K&B Satellite towers.

Dan Eriksson, Project Manager V-TAB, added; “Getting DCOS involved in our project turned into a huge success for us, not only did they help us keep our critical schedule in place, but they also brought our level of automation to a higher standard, with a full scale closed-loop system. We had a worry that two different control and operator systems on a single press could cause challenges for the operators, but the way DCOS implemented their system made this transition easy, and our operators are very pleased with the solution.”

The final press layout is six Manroland Colorman satellite towers, three K&B Commander satellite towers, two Manroland folders and one K&B folder.

carson_city

CARSON CITY taps DCOS for drive and control retrofit

KINNA, May 15, 2019 – PressWorks Ink, a subsidiary of Swift Communications, Inc., has contracted DCOS Automation Sweden for a complete drives and controls retrofit on its DGM 440 press. PressWorks Ink prints the Carson City “Nevada Appeal” and the Reno “Gazette-Journal” along with several other weekly, monthly, tabloid, and specialty products.

DCOS will replace the existing six Eurotherm SSD drives with new digital drives. The existing DGM consoles will be replaced with new DCOS consoles that integrate all press functions, ink presetting and remote inking control, dampening, splicers and infeed’s to new touchscreen control. The existing fiber optic loop will be replaced with a new EtherCat star-network with direct communication to each drive.

The drives and controls are supported by DCOS 24/7 remote support. Chris Johnson, Director of Print Manufacturing for Swift Communications adds; “for years we have spent too much time and effort troubleshooting our drive and controls issues. These older systems now have very limited technical support and spare parts availability. We felt the time was right to upgrade to a more modern, supportable platform. The feedback we received from DCOS customers with similar projects gave us the confidence to move forward with them.”

DCOS will also assist in the scavenging of useful spare parts from the old Eurotherm drives and DGM console to be used at another Swift Communications site.

While DCOS has a strong history of drives and controls retrofits in Europe on nearly all types of newspaper presses, this is the most extensive drives and controls project so far in the USA. “Obviously we are very excited to be awarded this project. It will demonstrate all our capabilities as we assist centralized newspaper printers like PressWorks Ink in the long-term performance and supportability of their presses” adds Ron Ehrhardt, Sales Director for DCOS in North and South America. “We now have recent drive, controls, and closed loop automation customers in the USA, and look forward to demonstrating our capabilities to this market.”

The installation will begin in September 2019.

Engle

ENGLE PRINTING COMPANY orders second DCOS press automation upgrade

KINNA, May 8, 2019 –Engle Printing Company, Inc (EPC,) a family owned printing company located in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, has ordered a second CRC4 closed loop density / register control system from DCOS Automation.

The CRC4 system will be installed on a second Tensor T400BE press with a configuration of four towers and one folder replacing the existing WPC register system. For ink density control, DCOS will integrate the CRC4 camera system with the existing Perretta remote inkers-The second press order came only a month after completion of the initial installation.
Jeremy Engle, VP Operation on why they moved forward with the project so quickly, “we are very happy with the DCOS solution that was installed last year. We are seeing immediate results and our production team believes it was the best install they have experienced.”

“Engle has been a fantastic customer for our closed loop density and register control equipment. We greatly appreciate the confidence they have in DCOS and look forward to continuing this partnership with the goal of making their presses run more efficiently, with low waste, and enhanced print quality” says Ron Ehrhardt, Sales Director – Americas, DCOS Sweden AB.
DCOS has also been contracted to replace the drives on an existing chill roll assembly on Engle’s Tensor T460 press with IR dryers.

The equipment will be shipped in May 2019 and installation
will be completed by the end of June 2019.