Coming off a successful Graph Expo in Chicago, manroland announced the sale of an eight color ROLAND 700 DirectDrive with Perfector to Pittsburgh's largest independent commercial printer, Knepper Press.

Known as the fastest makeready press on the market today, the ROLAND 700 at Knepper will be a is an eight-unit press with DirectDrive, a perfector and a coater. "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 DirectDrive 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."

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 twelve printing units. With the shortest makeready times, the ROLAND 700 DirectDrive press can reduce prep time by up to 60 percent, compared to a conventional sheetfed offset press. And, directly driven plate cylinders permit all printing plates to be changed simultaneously. Every printing unit is equipped with the fully automated plate changing system APL. 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.

The unique features of the DirectDrive, 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.