Clayton, NC-based pharmaceutical-packaging maker Colonial Carton Co. reports highly successful results using two KBA Qualitronic II inline sheet-inspection quality-control systems (www.kba-usa.com) on its KBA Rapida 105 41-in. sheetfed-offset presses. The printer is the first in North America to have both of its KBA presses equipped with the Qualitronic II systems.

“The scanner on the Qualitronic II inspects every sheet in every press run,” explains Joe Elphick, president and chief executive officer of Colonial Carton. “It is so fast that it can see an incomplete dot of an 'i' on the sheet and can monitor and inspect up to 16 million shades of color at the rate of 18,000 sph.”

Along with segregating imperfect sheets from the run, the Qualitronic II reduces waste by warning the operator of deviations in the press run, such as fading colors due to lack of ink. The operator is able to react before large quantities of waste sheets accumulate. The system was first developed for banknote and currency printing where quality control is paramount.