2017 was an active year for Karm Research Group and its companies. A year which saw the introduction of the Roto-Hybrid Process® to allow the simultaenous development of complementary gravure and gravure cylinder technologies to better address the current and future needs of various gravure markets over and above the innovative Hybrid Cylinder.
The Roto-Hybrid Process is the culmination of several years of research and development, and the next step in the Karm Research mission to bring about a better, quicker and cheaper gravure printing process.
The project enables a quicker route to introduce to the market, a more widened Hybrid Cylinder manufacturing process to facilitate longer face lengths and larger diameters for both new and redundant bases with more varied shaft configurations when applying the novel build-up technology to repurpose redundant gravure cylinder stocks.
Chrome Replacement – Green Gravure
Whilst there are uncertain times ahead in respect of how far, how quickly and with what cost implications there will be to the widely anticipated restrictions (or even a ban) in the use of Chromium VI by the European Chemicals Agency, the Roto-Hybrid team have brought about a program of research and development to introduce a viable alternative to using Chromium VI in gravure which it has incorporated into the Green Gravure project.
The project aims to bring to the market the state-of-the-art process which combines two innovative pre-press gravure printing cylinder process technologies; namely the Hybrid Cylinder technology which enables size variable cylinder production and a Diamond-Like Carbon coating process to replace chrome plating and other electrolytic processes like copper or nickel plating.
Irrespective of the regulatory actions in the short and medium term the Roto-Hybrid team’s aim is to offer the industry a replacement cylinder coating technology that offers better performance over and above the use of chromium.
To this end Karm Research Group are pleased to announce that we have now completed the first year of the European Commission funding to accelerate our ground breaking technology and are on target for it reaching the market in 2018.
More details on the Roto-Hybrid Process® can be found at the www.rotohybrid.com website.
