Coming off a successful Graph Expo, manroland today announced the sale of an eight color ROLAND 700 Direct Drive with Perfector sheetfed press to Pittsburgh's largest independent commercial printer, Knepper Press.

Known as the fastest make-ready press on the market today, the ROLAND 700 is an 8-unit press with Direct Drive (DD), a perfector and a coater. Press operators gain the ability to multitask three functions at one time, reducing prep times by up to 60% by performing blanket and impression cylinder washing, mounting plates, and digital file transfer tasks simultaneously.

"Our new investment in the press further solidifies our position as the top tri-state printer," notes Chairman Bill Knepper. "The direct drive system will complement our current press lineup by enabling us to efficiently and effectively produce smaller runs as low as 500 impressions. The press will be fully networked through our two other sheetfed presses via manroland's printnet, so we can switch jobs back and forth as needed and further standardize our production platform. So where make-ready issues continue to kill other printers on short-run jobs, with the ROLAND 700 we'll be better positioned to bring more to our bottom line. It's an ideal fit between our digital and conventional presses, and meets our expanding client base's needs nicely."

"In today's highly competitive sheetfed offset commercial printing market, older equipment simply cannot compete with current generation machines," notes well known industry analyst, Bill Lamparter, President, PrintCom Consulting Group. "The operating features of 2010 generation presses increase their productivity while producing a more consistent, higher quality product than the previous generation of presses. For example, the ROLAND 700 series equipped with automated wash-up, direct drive-enabled rapid plate changing, preset fountain keys, and electronic print length correction results in higher productivity, which in turn means lower costs which can increase profits and/or improve competitiveness." The ROLAND 700 DirectDrive makes every printer capable of multitasking. Tasks such as plate changing that previously had to be done as a separate task, can now take place simultaneously in up to 12 printing units. With the shortest make-ready times, the ROLAND 700 DirectDrive press can reduce prep time by up to 60%, compared to a conventional sheetfed offset press. And, directly driven plate cylinders permit all printing plates to be changed simultaneously.

The unique features of the Direct Drive, such as electronic print length adjustment from the console put the press operator in command of short runs, eliminating the time wasted shutting down to change plate packing. Every printing unit is equipped with the fully automated plate changing system (APL) that further simplifies the printer's work. The great advantage is that all plates can be changed in only one minute regardless of the press configuration. In effect, no time is needed for plate changing, as it takes place during the three to four minutes needed for simultaneous washing of the impression and blanket cylinders.