With just 37 days to go until Drupa opens its doors, it seems that every passing week brings news of yet another must-see exhibit.
Last week I attended KBA's pre-Drupa press event, held prior to its traditional pre-show customer open house where KBA gets to display its wares to a captive audience before the main event at the Messe.
Yet again I was struck by the awesome amount of precision engineering and hi-tech that goes into today's super-efficient and super-productive offset presses.
President Claus Bolza-Schunemann made some noteworthy comments about KBA's approach to weathering the crisis that has battered press manufacturers since the last Drupa in 2008.
He said KBA had used this difficult period to work on new or improved products that would hopefully be successful for existing and new customers. And for KBA too, of course. "Our job is to bring ink onto a substrate, whether it's plastic, metal, a CD... it's always ink. That's our job and that's where we need to make use of the know-how we have."
Some of this know-how is to be found in the new RotaJET 76 inkjet web, which has a clever paper path and materials handling expertise ported from KBA's high-speed newspaper and commercial web presses.
The RotaJET's features include auto webbing up and full automatic tension control, along with a flying job change facility to reduce start-up waste.
Less high-profile, but just as interesting, is the new AirTronic Drum to keep the sheet completely flat for integrated inkjet imprinting on KBA's sheetfed presses. This vacuum cylinder could also be used for other processes that need a completely flat sheet, too, so it will be super-interesting to see where KBA goes with it.
And, following Goss International's announcement of a new web press for packaging with its Sunday Vpak, KBA is porting its Genius technology into a UV waterless web offset press for packaging apps with the 800mm wide Varius 80.
Here too, one of the key messages is around big reductions in start-up waste, which can be a mightily attractive argument, especially for those printing onto costly substrates - I expect this wastage issue to be a hot topic around all sorts of devices come Drupa.
Meanwhile, my must-see list is getting longer.
