Cold Jet Australia Dry ice blasting systems shorten lengthy cleaning processes by on-line precision cleaning. Ink buildup on the gears and deck guides causes poor alignment and results in low print quality and high scrap rates. Cold Jet dry ice blasting systems can reduce or in some cases eliminate low quality and high scrap rates.
In many plants, the cleaning of the side frames and print deck mechanism is avoided until it is absolutely necessary. The modern presses with six to eight colour decks can increase the cleaning downtime.
However, when using Cold Jet dry ice blasting, because the cylinders can be removed to provide easy access to all surfaces, both sides of the deck can be cleaned quickly. In addition, dried out drip pans and fountains can easily be cleaned.
Printing with fluid inks at high speeds also creates an ‘ink mist’ of fine droplets that comes from the splitting and transfer of the inks from the printing plate to the substrate being printed. These droplets settle on the ‘between colour dryer boxes’ and eventually clog the vent slots or nozzles, resulting in a reduced and uneven airflow, which in turn inhibits proper drying.
To compensate for this reduced airflow, the press speed is reduced, which results in lost production and lower quality. In a typical cleaning process, manual scraping requires 20 to30 man-hours per piece of equipment. Using the Cold Jet dry ice blasting process, the same piece of equipment was cleaned in less than two hours.
The cleaning can be done between job changes on the press, giving more production time and higher production rates.
Cold Jet Australia dry ice blasting systems are an alternative to the use of dangerous solvents, scrapers, chisels and emery cloths without dismantling the press, thus eliminating direct and indirect costs such as downtime hours, poor printing quality, increase scrap, wear of machined parts, and disposal of hazardous waste and solvents.