Absolute Move Ahead With I-MAX

Earlier this year Absolute Engineering launched I-MAX, a new Woven Carbon Fibre chambered doctor blade system which massively reduces both the time and ink loss on colour change.

Traditionally, chambers have been specified to provide print quality, I-MAX provides this, in addition to reducing costs and downtime. In order to verify their claims, Absolute has commissioned an independent report which proves that I-MAX has a payback on investment of only 6 months!.

The basic numbers with a conventional chamber and washup are as follows:

• 25% of ink loss is generated during colour change.
• Costs for cleaning wash water are typically the same as the value of the lost ink.
• The environmental costs for landfill of inert crumb after flocculation are rising rapidly, but are currently around €10,000pa for a typical corrugated plant.

MAX allows users to cut these figures dramatically, giving:

• 95% reduction in ink loss at job change.
• 95% reduction in downstream ink/wash water costs.
• Reduced production downtime.

I-MAX is an ink maximisation system that consists of two elements, an integral wiper shuttle which resides permanently in the chamber cavity, and an external linear drive. During colour changes, the wiper shuttle traverses along the chamber, wiping the ink towards the drain ports. With residual ink of less than 300ml on a 2500mm wide unit, the washup cycle uses significantly less wash water, and is much quicker.

Absolute have already received several orders for I-MAX, and have received significant interest from Corrugated and Tissue companies, as well as customers using more viscous solutions where ink return is a problem. Another sector to express interest is companies printing solutions with heavy particulates, where maintaining suspension inside a traditional chamber is a problem.

Antony Whiteside of Absolute commented "Industry feedback confirms that reducing waste whilst improving output continues to be key targets for our Industry. Environmental performance is important and growing priority. I-MAX uniquely addresses all these objectives"