CONTI-AIR® Specialists on Research in Finland

Printing blankets are one of the key elements when it is a matter of flawlessly transporting a web of paper through a rotary offset press. This was quite clear to the members of the project concerned with “Higher Productivity for Offset Printing Presses by Advanced Web Control” under way at the Finnish VTT, the institute for application-related technical research in Finland.

And so the specialists at CONTI-AIR were called in. They thus now represent the sole printing blanket manufacturer participating in the second phase of the wide-ranging research project.

The consortium is composed of Finnish newspaper printers, leading printing machine manufactures, automation suppliers, paper makers and KCL, the research company owned by Finnish paper industry, which oversees the project’s experimental and research activities together with VTT.

The goal of the project is to determine the essential parameters governing the web and to make them accessible via machine control data. To realize this, simulations, lab pressure tests and field tests with intensive data collection are being conducted for months on end in real-life operations.

The second phase of the project is expected to last two years.