C&C Flexo

Thanks to an innovative solution for managing pressure inside pneumatic cylinders, C&C Flexo produces high-performance flexographic printing machines, capable of ensuring a constant quality level of the finished product.

For almost seventy years, C&C Flexo has been operating in the flexographic printing sector on reel-to-reel materials, both for finished systems and as in-line elements for various sectors combined with extrusion, coupling, lacquering and everything related to the world of flexible materials. The aspects that most sets apart C&C Flexo are related to the printing process, therefore to inking, as well as to the extreme customisation of the solutions that customers often require, at a work speed of 650 meters per minute.

Need

As Nicoletta Carraro, General Manager of C&C Flexo, explains: “We needed to optimise the inking process through an improved management of positioning, movement and of the inking itself. With Camozzi - approaching an application similar to the one we used before (with which we were not satisfied in terms of results) we carried out a project in partnership, to achieve the best solution we could reach in terms of performance and quality. Camozzi Automation has succeeded in providing us with specific control over the inking process. Previously, we had a movement system for positioning the ink containment chamber that was not fully under control, which often gave us problems related to exceeding the speed of 400 meters per minute”.

Results

The new electro-pneumatic system supplied by Camozzi Automation makes it possible to control the pressure inside the Racla cylinders, counteracting the centrifugal force that would tend to open the same Racla. This is to the benefit of the positioning of the cylinders – therefore of the quality of the print - with a reduced blade consumption and side gasket wear, in addition to constant efficiency of the ink quantity on the cylinder surface.

This result was achieved thanks to an electronic proportional micro-regulator of the Series K8P series running at 12 litres per minute, which has replaced the traditional manual standard pressure regulators and is capable of varying pressure in each individual cylinder, thus controlling it with great accuracy.

To improve the sliding properties of the entire system, low-friction cylinders have been used. Unlike the standard ones, these are activated at a very low pressure, with a much higher sensitivity, which allows rather contained reactivity times.

The solution supplied by Camozzi Automation was installed on a Gearless Cyberflex 2800 system running at 650 meters per minute. If, as the preliminary tests have confirmed, the results are satisfactory in the long term, we will extend it to all our machines.

Nicoletta Carraro
General Manager di C&C Flexo

Industriel automatisering