On an average day, C&S Carton, a division of Chelsea Milling Co., produces 1.5 million packages, 42-up on a sheet, in one 10-hr shift. When the fourth-generation company decided to update the graphics on the “little blue boxes” that hold its Jiffy® baking mixes, Chelsea Milling was disappointed by the results from its more than 30-year-old press setup.

“We were running a 5-color, 77-in. Harris [sheetfed-offset press] from 1970 until about two years ago; it had cloth dampeners and was badly in need of major repair,” says Don Stephan, C&S Carton plant manager. “When we went to proof the new graphics on our shells, the owner realized we couldn't reach the color quality—the brightness of the red on the flag—that he wanted to achieve.”

“Since we don't advertise, that package is the franchise,” says Jack Kennedy, vice president of operations. In the 78 years that Chelsea Milling has been selling Jiffy prepared baking mixes, it has never advertised to consumers. “So we replaced it [the 5-color press] with another 77-in. Harris, a 6-color this time, and upgraded it with the Essex Products Group (EPG) system (www.epg-inc.com) and Dahlgren dampeners,” Stephan adds.

The converter's EPG's digital KeyColor ink control system incorporates six Smart Fountains, which allow press operators to quickly adjust ink key settings on all six press towers from a central console. Prior to the EPG install, “to accommodate normal variation during a press run, the operator had to manually adjust hundreds of ink keys by hand,” says Kennedy. “Not all 59 ink keys had to be adjusted on each unit every time, but a majority of them had to be changed.”

The computerized ink-key control contributes to the Harris' color repeatability throughout an entire press run, while speeding makeready and cutting waste. The Dahlgren continuous-dampening system helps maintain consistent press performance and also reduces scrap. “Why bother going to the effort of refreshing the graphical look of our packages if we couldn't reproduce colors from package to package on a consistent basis,” remarks Kennedy. “We needed to have that repeatability and quality to make our other efforts pay off.”

Although not a typical converter, C&S Carton faces many of the same challenges, most notably increased quality demands and requests for faster turnarounds, while keeping costs down. Chelsea Milling's product line continually grows: There are now 24 different prepared mixes, and C&S prints shells for every one of them. Overall, C&S Carton's 14 employees print 300 million shells annually. Prepress work is handled outside; C&S prints onto 18-pt recycled, clay-coated boxboard (supplied by Rock-Tenn) then strips and cuts the board, sending the shells to Chelsea Milling flat. Wikoff Color provides the six inks used to print a Jiffy blue box: three process colors and three spot colors—a dark blue, a background blue, and a red, which is formulated specifically for Jiffy.

For each product shell it prints, C&S develops a history, stored in the EPG KeyColor console. Some shells, especially those for its corn muffin mix, are produced constantly, while others, like those for holiday or seasonal mixes, are produced intermittently. The data in the KeyColor console ensure consistent color regardless of how much time has passed between a particular product's shell runs.

As part of its own improvement process, C&S's prepress house Panoplate Lithographic (www.panoplate.com) also provided the converter with a profile of its new press. “Profiling or fingerprinting gave us the characteristics of our press, dot gain and all the other attributes of how one press differs from another press,” Kennedy explains. “Panoplate applies that profile and makes adjustments at plate level rather than us having to make adjustments on the press.”

With the profile of the press in hand, the EPG system became even more significant. “If we still had to control color by hand, it would defeat the purpose of all these other improvements,” notes Kennedy. “The investment in the EPG KeyColor lets us make adjustments from the console, very accurately and quickly.”

Using automated core-cutting machines from Appleton Manufacturing Div. (AMD), paperboard and label manufacturer Green Bay Packaging, Inc. (GBP), simultaneously improves working conditions at several US production facilities while protecting the integrity of the pressure-sensitive label rolls it sells to commercial printers.

“AMD core cutters burnish core ends during cutting, eliminating unwanted core dust that can contaminate pressure-sensitive stock during winding,” says Green Bay Packaging coated-products operations slitting supervisor Jeff Klima. “The precision cut length of these units is outstanding—helping us produce a perfectly wound roll that runs flawlessly on our customers' converting machinery.”

The company began installing new AMD A301 core cutters (www.appletonmfg.com) in October 2007; once installations are complete, GBP's coated products division's Los Angeles, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Minneapolis and Orlando (FL) facilities will use the core cutters to slit and distribute pressure-sensitive label material as part of the company's one-day customer service program.

At its Green Bay (WI) facility, the primary converter currently operates a fully automated Appleton Manufacturing P-510 core cutting system with autoloader. The P-510 programming capabilities help operators cut cores to the precise length needed. “We've reduced our core scrap just a tremendous amount with this unit,” remarks Klima.

When GBP originally looked to replace its previous manual core-cutter at the Green Bay plant, it looked for technology that would improve operators' well-being. The P-510's automated loading system helps keep employees safe by eliminating the need to manually load long master cores. A forklift loads the 3- and 6-in.-dia., 10-ft cores into the autoloader hopper. The working environment also became a lot cleaner. “Because of the quality of the cut and the burnish end, there's no dust,” Klima says.

Another benefit for the converter is AMD's proximity to Green Bay Packagings' headquarters. “Appleton's right in our backyard; they're just 25 miles away,” Klima adds.

Dust doesn't stop Tension Envelope Corp. from accurately converting a range of CD/DVD storage sleeves, self-contained mailers and pull-tab envelopes. To help it manufacture more than 12 billion pieces a year for customers worldwide, the family-owned and operated converter based in Kansas City, MO, employs Coast Controls all-air web guides (www.coastcontrols.com). These subsystems use low-pressure plant air to guide a web without the need for electrical wiring and controls.According to Tension project engineer Mike Brazil, web position impacts everything else down the line, from trimming and folding to print registration so it's essential to start with accurately guiding the web right off the unwind. While dust from envelope converting can challenge ultrasonic and optical web-guide sensors, all-air web guide systems blow dust and contaminants away from the edge detector while sensing the web edge with opposing air pressures, he says. According to Brazil, however, it wasn't the ease of setup and performance within a dusty environment that makes the Coast Controls systems preferable. “It's their durability and dependability—they're flawless,” says Brazil. “You simply set them up and forget about them. And that helps support all the precision equipment used downline in our converting process.”