Success stories

American Press Technologies has delivered a wide variety of custom designed systems to improve the performance and reliability of our customer’s manufacturing operations. Below are a few of our success stories.

Electrical Control Systems

Color Console

The customer’s Fuji color console was obsolete and suffered from frequent breakdowns. APT designed and installed a custom built color console that provided all of the features of color consoles available on new presses while allowing the customer to avoid the cost of investing in a new press. Our American Console allows the customer to save and restore key settings from prior print jobs. Our color console includes APT proprietary circuit boards.

Color console	Color console closeup	Proprietary circuit boards

Complete Press Control System

The customer desired to purchase and install an eight and one-half unit KBA Varimat press. The press was created from components of several used presses. The customer was not satisfied with installing the original failure prone Komeg electronics. The modifications that would have been required to control the extra units and new accessories added to his concerns. APT provided a complete press control package. All major components were replaced with new, locally-available UL listed components. The project included a new control cabinet, a color console similar to the one described previously, an Allen-Bradley PanelView man-machine interface, registration controls, dampener controls, new main drive, and other equipment.

New 4 door control panel		Press/Console HMI

Main Drive Replacement

The customer had high maintenance costs and excessive down time due to old equipment. APT installed a digital DC power supply, properly sized motor, and power transmission components in place of the obsolete brush-shifting motor, jog motor, and drive clutches. The control logic on the machine was modified to integrate the new drive into the existing control package.

Delivery Pile Motor Replacement

The customer had frequent failures with the two speed brake motor that was supplied with the press. Replacement parts were only available from the press manufacturer making them very expensive and resulting in added downtime while waiting for parts. APT replaced the two speed brake motor with standard, readily available parts. A standard NEMA-rated motor and separate brake was used. The single piston clutch/brake in the APT design provides for a soft start and stop of the pile and prevents the motor from ever running against the brake thereby further reducing wear on the equipment.

Coater Speed Control

Our customer integrates custom designed coaters into KBA presses for their customers. APT provides the drive and controls package to operate these coaters and synchronize the surface speed of the coater applicator roll to the press speed, thereby eliminating coating build-up on the leading and trailing edges of the image.

Post Gluer

The customer’s equipment had obsolete Reeves drives for which replacement parts are unavailable. APT provided a control package to replace the Reeves drives and added encoders to allow closed loop control. The new system delivers a wider speed range, consistent spacing of odd shaped cartoons, and eliminates problems with loss of position during jog.

Mechanical Systems

Catwalk Bascule Bridge

The customer wanted a catwalk across the feed end of a Bobst cutter, but the catwalk needed to move out of the way to allow rapid load changes. APT designed a Bascule bridge section for the catwalk that would lift clear of the load with the press of a button.

Catwalk lowered	Catwalk raised

Gullwing Sheet Delivery

The customer was running a Planeta press and was having difficulty controlling heavy caliper, long grain sheets with heavy ink coverage, and significant curl. APT designed a delivery system that formed the sheet into a gull wing shape thereby providing sufficient rigidity to the sheet to allow control of the sheet during delivery. The delivery system included a Gullwing to impart a controlled shape to the sheet, and modifications to the delivery vacuum and air supplies.

Gullwing