At PackPlus2016, Coimbatore-based Autoprint Machinery Manufacturers showed live demos of its automatic carton print inspection machine – Checkmate 50. KG Suresh, joint managing director of Autoprint, says, “In the last three to four years, Autoprint’s focus has been more on the postpress section of packaging. We have launched coating as well as diecutting machines. And in the last two years, we have been focussing more on the automatic carton inspection machine called Checkmate 50 which runs at a speed of 250 metres a minute, with three cameras inspecting simultaneously. The machine gives tremendous confidence to end customers to deliver defect-free products to their clients. It is very critical especially in the pharmaceutical, FMCG and other industries where quality standards have become much stricter.”
Suresh says, “Manual inspection becomes very difficult to find out particular defects. This machine is capable of finding all defects related to printing, coating, hologram, registered hologram, foil stamping, spot coating among others which are very critical in segments like pharma and FMCG. So far we have installed eight Checkmate 50 machines in India including Hyderabad, Baddi, Mumbai and Bengaluru. The health of these machines is monitored online by us.” The Checkmate 50 can segregate the good and defective sheets neatly into different stacks which can be further analyzed to correct the previous process.
“We took some time to develop the print inspection machine as we did not want to look at anybody else’s machine to develop this product. Instead, we decided to talk to customers, meet them and find out what really is required by them and with our mechanical engineering experience, we built a machine from bottom up. The machine is developed from scratch based on feedback from customers,” Suresh says.
The Checkmate 50 was launched about three years ago while the first beta site ran about two years ago. The production machines are running for the last one-and-a-half year and since then Autoprint has been installing two machines almost every two months. This year the company is planning to install about 10 machines.
Speaking about PackPlus, Suresh says, “We are getting varied responses at PackPlus as a lot of people are coming from different industries. We are getting the opportunity to meet end-users – the carton buyers – at the exhibition and this will give us more ideas to improve our product.”
Packaging South Asia is a cooperating media partner for drupa 2016 which was held from 31 May to 10 June at Dusseldorf, Germany
