Located in the industrial hub of Santej near Ahmedabad, Technomec Roll Manufacturing Company has been working with the Indian rotogravure industry since 1989. It is one of the leading manufacturers of rotogravure cylinders in India and supplies to major convertors and printers across the country. With its policy of not dealing with brand owners directly, roughly 70% of the company’s customers are packaging convertors. After having established itself in the steel, copper and ready-to-engrave cylinder segments, Technomec has entered the electronic engraving segment recently with the installation of five engraving machines consisting of two Ohio and three Hell engravers.
“We have entered a new segment, that of electronic engraving, and we feel we are fully equipped to offer the best possible service to our customers. Our aim is to meet every demand that comes our way. This has opened up a lot of new possibilities for us,” says Amal Amin, director, Technomec.
Technomec has invested in Ohio Spectrum Packaging Engraver with Vision 3 head and Hybrid Engraving and Ohio Spectrum Compact Engraver with Vision 3 head and Impact Engraving. It has also bought a Collage-S Software with Hell Output module. The Spectrum units include semi-automated features to simplify engraving and the well-known Vision 3 engrave heads. The Spectrum engravers include a wide variety of capability thanks to the engrave heads. Between the two machines, Technomec can engrave standard electro-mechanical screens at over 8 kHz, provide outstanding linework quality with hybrid engraving, and also engrave depths to 90 µm with the Impact feature.
The Collage Layout system supports not just the two Ohio Spectrum engravers but also creates the engraving files for the Hell engravers on-site. This one-size-fits-all approach reduces the number of application software that operators need to resort to. Technomec’s Hell engravers include one Hell K500G3 and two Hell K5 Smart.
Talking about the Ohio Spectrum engravers, Nitin Apte, director, Technomec says the company opted for Ohio because it gives you something extra. “If we wanted just another engraver, we had many options in the market. What we needed was something extra and that is why we opted for Ohio. There is enhanced quality and this is achieved without printers or convertors making any major changes to their systems at their end,” Apte shares.
Recently, Technomec supplied a set of its engraved cylinders to Pelican, which ran those cylinders on its newly designed press at 500 meters per minute. Amin says the feedback that Pelican gave was very encouraging. “They said that these were the best quality cylinders they had used on their presses. The point is that no matter how automated the press is, the quality of cylinders is very important,” he adds.
Exploring more avenues
With the new setup, Technomec now has the capacity to produce 4,000 ready-to-engrave cylinders per month while it can supply 3,000 engraved cylinders per month. In terms of its capability, Technomec can handle cylinders with a circumference range of 400 mm to 1,200 mm and length range of 350 mm to 2.2 meters.
Since the installation of the five engravers in November 2016, the company has supplied about 3,000 engraved cylinders to its customers in India. “This is the beginning of our expansion phase that we have embarked upon. We are exploring all kinds of opportunities. For instance, we are looking to export engraved cylinders as well,” says Amin.
Technomec is already exporting 50% of its other variants of cylinders to markets such as the Middle East, Africa, Mexico, Europe and South America.
