Smaller, More Powerful, More Efficient - the New AirStar 3000 Air Supply System from Heidelberg
The Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Heidelberg) Star System covers the whole system solution with peripherals for Speedmaster presses. The key peripherals are connected to the press via the Prinect CP2000 Center control station by means of CANopen data bus.
All peripherals are developed directly by Heidelberg or in close cooperation with leading suppliers. This provides a whole raft of benefits for customers, including extensive automation functions, standardized and easy-to-follow navigation and one-stop installation and maintenance.
Heidelberg has recently unveiled a new generation of peripherals featuring the AirStar 3000 air supply cabinet, CombiStar 3000 combination unit and DryStar 3000 LYL and DryStar 3000 UV dryers. These enable printers to increase productivity by up to 30 percent.
This is reason enough to cover these innovations for peripherals in a series of articles. In the first part, we will look at air supply.
AirStar 3000 - up to 50 percent less power consumption, 45 percent less heat transfer and a 50 percent smaller footprint
Every press needs air, for example to separate the sheets in the feeder, to transport the sheets between the printing units and to ensure optimum pile stacking in the delivery. While many press manufacturers "hide" the blowers required for this underneath the press, Heidelberg has long been committed to the concept of a decentralized, high-performance and easy-to-access air supply cabinet. Since 1995, Heidelberg has installed over 15,000 of these cabinets on Speedmaster presses. The new AirStar 3000 air supply system takes this success story one stage further with a quantum leap in terms of energy efficiency and new blower technology. The AirStar 3000 features two new types of air generator: a two-stage claw pump and - for the first time in the print media industry - a turbo radial blower with very high efficiency of 70 percent.
In future therefore, all Speedmaster XL 105 presses will be equipped with the AirStar 3000 air supply cabinet as standard and, as of fall this year, this will also be the case for most other Speedmaster models. This innovative technology delivers annual electricity cost savings of up to 8,000 Euro based on a Speedmaster XL 105-6+LX in three-shift operation.
Groundbreaking technology from HeidelBerg Parts
"Presses and peripherals today need to be closely coordinated with one another," explains Ruben Schmitt, Head of the "Air Systems" development department at Heidelberg. "The high production speed of a Speedmaster XL 105 requires optimum sheet travel. The press regulates this very conveniently by adapting the air quantities automatically to the printing stock and production speed. This automatic regulation and the ability to store all air settings along with the print job have necessitated a whole new concept. An "one-size-fits-all" air supply system or installing a central air generation system for the whole print shop is no longer sufficient," Schmitt adds.
The key objective of the development is to ensure optimum availability of the press. The individual air consumers such as the blowing devices in the printing units or on the transfer drums are therefore not supplied directly from the blowers. Instead, a central air distribution tube is installed along the press which supplies almost all the press's blast-air consumers. This tube is fed from several identical blowers belonging to the AirStar 3000 system. If one of these blowers fails, another one automatically cuts in, thereby significantly minimizing the risk of a press standstill.
