Once the designs were ready to become a reality, a Ronik flatbed printer began to produce high-quality, full-colour prints.
From there, the job was forwarded to imposition and planning software, also provided by Enfocus. It offers solutions for packaging, labels, commercial, and wide-format printers. Combining imposition and planning allows a shop’s pre-press and planning departments to save valuable time repeating the same work. Users can plan layouts and use the same job in pre-press to produce print-ready output.
Another key partner, U.S.-based Motionalysis, provided live tracking and shop-floor analytics of the printing and finishing equipment. The software and services company specializes in digital manufacturing, with a focus on optimizing digital XY cutting in a print shop. What exactly do “analytics” mean in this situation? Essentially, it no longer makes sense to capture, track, and report data manually, as it uses up a great deal of time, resources, and labour. Plus, with the increase in smart manufacturing and automation, it is simply unrealistic for printers to manage their operations and business data effectively without the help of production data collection software.
With regular, automated collection of data, printers can achieve greater visibility into their entire production processes in real time and are better able to understand and evaluate it. This helps shop owners see where employees need support, while also providing detailed information about such things as machine status, parts, employee efficiency, finishing department throughput, and other key metrics. Ultimately, having accurate, up-to-date data is essential for making smart business decisions.
Once the designs were ready to become a reality, a Ronik flatbed printer began to produce high-quality, full-colour prints. The Mississauga, Ont., company’s printers can accommodate both rigid and flexible substrates with LED-curable inks. They include a built-in unloader and offer print-on-demand capabilities, with minimal maintenance. This particular printer series can process more than 50 boards per hour.
A ‘fun’ finish
Finally, the prints arrived at an Elitron digital cutting table, where attendees saw the final product created—all without any manual intervention. The Italy-based manufacturer, with a North American office in Atlanta, Ga., specializes in producing robotic cutting solutions for the sign, display, and packaging industries, with advanced material handling solutions.
When the prints were ready, the autonomous mobile robot delivered them to the digital cutting machine, where attendees saw the creation of the final product.
However, the most head-turning and exciting feature of the booth was exactly how the prints arrived at the Elitron cutter—via a Ranger Interlogistics autonomous mobile robot (AMR). Created by U.S.-based company GreyOrange, these AMRs can navigate through a production environment quickly and independently. Integrating robots and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled software also allows real-time decision-making for print fulfillment. In fact, tight labour markets combined with escalating stock keeping unit (SKU) volumes and accelerated shipping times now demand moving past older, more time-consuming, and costly fulfillment technologies. To make the process even smoother, Ronik’s parent company, Garry Machine Manufacturing Inc, developed a custom drop plate that sat on top of the AMR, making it a more “universal solution” for carrying various types of print media.
