Vulcan Quickstart Trials
Trials of the new Trelleborg Vulcan Quickstart blanket at Italian printer Ancora Arti Grafiche have gone so well that one blanket is still in use on a Heidelberg Speedmaster 102 after more than two million impressions.
The printer, which specialises in producing high-quality commercial work and books mainly for the church, already uses the industry-leading blankets Vulcan Folio and Vulcan Alto Plus throughout its Milan factory.
“We’ve tested Vulcan Quickstart on our four-colour Speedmaster 102 using a wide variety of jobs and one of the benefits we noticed early on was the blanket’s high resistance to continuously changing formats,” says director Fr. Delio Remondini. “We changed the other Quickstart blankets on the 102 after one and a half million copies only because of a very serious smash caused by a shard of wood in the paper pile. The stock used on all of our four Speedmaster presses generally consists of high quality coated paper.
“We already obtain first class results with our existing Vulcan products.
- The new Vulcan Quickstart provides excellent paper release and ink release and this has reduced the washing cycles of the blanket remarkably.
- The dot gain characteristics have been good, resulting in an open dot structure and accurate reproduction of halftones.”
- Vulcan Quickstart incorporates a polyurethane-based backing that eliminates the need for underpacking on the cylinder and provides unrivalled smash resistance and durability. With a thickness of 2.35 mm,
- Vulcan Quickstart is initially being aimed at users of Heidelberg Speedmasters, but Trelleborg says it will introduce versions suitable for other manufacturers’ sheet-fed presses.
The specially-constructed backing, which is an integral part of Vulcan Quickstart, means the blanket can be applied to the cylinder much more quickly than normal, with trials being on average 20 per cent faster. The underpacking offers a high resistance to the chemicals used in normal blanket washes etc, eliminating the risk of delamination, while there is no need to purchase and store separate underpacking. Ancora Arti Grafiche uses conventional inks, although Vulcan
Quickstart can be used equally successfully with conventional or UV inks.
“Our operators love using Quickstart because it is so easy to handle and fast to put on the press,” says Fr. Delio Remondini. “Using a blanket with conventional underpacking requires skill in order to achieve the correct calibration and results - Trelleborg’s new blanket eliminates this need.
“We’ve been a customer of Trelleborg for more than twenty years and have always been impressed by its service and that of its distributor in Italy. We’re also always interested in new developments from the company.
“We now intend to conduct some further evaluation between Quickstart and the blanket solutions we use from Trelleborg. However, for any Heidelberg Speedmaster printer not already using Trelleborg blankets, changing to the new Vulcan Quickstart could lead to major improvements in press productivity and subsequent cost reductions.”