HP PageWide C500 clinches multiple awards

HP Inc. announced that the PageWide C500 press has won multiple awards for its enhanced sheet-feeding system.

The HP PageWide C500 press has won a Pinnacle InterTech Award for the feeder technology. In addition, it won second place at the AICC /BCN/CT Innovator of the Year competition in the Machinery category.

The new feeder is a robust production solution designed to improve converters operating profit and reduce waste. It supports a wider range of sheets, including thin and micro-flutes, while maintaining a smooth feeding process and fast job changeovers.

“HP has invested substantially in the feeder as part of its ongoing commitment to the corrugated market and will continue to develop this game-changing industry technology,” said David Tomer, General Manager, HP PageWide Corrugated, Post-Print.

The feeding enhancements include:

• Stack Topography Alignment technology to automatically compensate for uneven or warped stacks.

• Dynamic Stack Alignment technology to overcome vertically unaligned stacks.

• Smart Auto Recovery technology to identify and overcome feeding problems related to bad stacking or damaged sheets, avoiding operator’s manual intervention.

• A wider range of applications with thin and micro flutes.

The BoxMaker, a US packaging provider that recently purchased a second C500 for its new site, is already operating the new feeding technology.

“Like most converters in the industry, we need to handle different varieties of stacks that arrive at our plant. With the HP PageWide C500 top feeder’s latest enhancements, we successfully handle many sheets and stacks that previously had to be disqualified due to their condition. This allows less waste, fast time to market and better utilisation of our operators’ time - not only that the automatic stack replacement time has been reduced, but also there are fewer interventions due to quality and alignment of sheets,” said Richard Brown, President and CEO, The BoxMaker.

ICO of Italy has also made the upgrade.

“After successfully installing the HP PageWide C500 top feeder latest enhancement, our stack replacement time has reduced to a minimum, which saves valuable time, money and labor. With this upgrade, machine availability and uptime have significantly increased and allow us to convert additional volumes from our flexo line,” said Michelle Mastromatteo, R&D Manager, ICO, Italy.

The HP PageWide C500 is designed to produce offset print quality for a wide range of corrugated packaging and display applications on both coated and uncoated sheets. The C500 reduces the cost of manufacturing boxes and opens new business opportunities with digital flexibility, direct-to-board printing at scaled volume production. The C500 prints at 75 meter/min in top print quality with 1200 npi resolution using one million nozzles.