Amazing Machines

All machines Printing and Converting

Printing and Converting

Presses, folder-gluers, corrugators and web converting at full tilt.

Want the mechanism, not just the footage?

We wrote a full explainer for this category: Folder-Gluers and Carton Converting. What the machine does, how it works, the numbers that matter and who buys one.

11 films

  • Video thumbnail: Running crash-lock boxes on a folder-gluer 3:25
    Printing and Converting

    Running crash-lock boxes on a folder-gluer

    Crash-lock bottom boxes are the ones that pop open into a shape when you squeeze them, and they are notoriously hard to run fast because the folding sequence fights itself. This device solved it. Watching the blanks flip and lock at full speed is genuinely hard to believe.

    BOBST 2015

  • Video thumbnail: A slitter rewinder cutting one wide roll into many narrow ones 9:44
    Printing and Converting

    A slitter rewinder cutting one wide roll into many narrow ones

    A slitter rewinder unwinds a giant parent reel, cuts it into narrower rolls and rewinds each one at tension, with automatic core loading and reel change. Web handling at speed is a control problem more than a mechanical one. Ten minutes of a machine doing something deceptively difficult.

    Kampf Machinery UK Ltd. 2015

  • Video thumbnail: How wrapping paper is printed 8:42
    Printing and Converting

    How wrapping paper is printed

    A full production run of printed wrapping paper on a large format offset press, from plate to finished pallet. Heidelberg North America explains ink, coating and the reel-fed sheeter feeding the press. A genuinely good end-to-end look at commercial printing.

    Heidelberg North America 2023

  • Video thumbnail: How paper becomes corrugated board 7:11
    Printing and Converting

    How paper becomes corrugated board

    Georgia-Pacific walks through corrugated board from paper reel to finished sheet, filmed inside their own plant. It is plain, factual and shows the corrugating rolls forming the flute. The best short explanation of how a cardboard box actually gets its strength.

    Georgia-Pacific 2015

  • Video thumbnail: How tissue paper is made 5:51
    Printing and Converting

    How tissue paper is made

    A tissue machine turns a dilute slurry of fiber and water into dry paper in seconds, at speeds where the sheet would tear if the tension were wrong by a fraction. Valmet explains the headbox, the Yankee dryer and the creping blade. The scale of a paper machine is hard to grasp until you see the reel.

    Valmet 2019

  • Video thumbnail: Inside a corrugator, end to end 4:46
    Printing and Converting

    Inside a corrugator, end to end

    A corrugator glues fluted medium between two liners and produces board continuously at a rate no other process matches, then cuts it to sheet on the fly. The machine is often over a hundred meters long. BHS explains the wet end and dry end clearly.

    BHSCorrugated 2021

  • Video thumbnail: Behind the scenes on a very large format press 3:08
    Printing and Converting

    Behind the scenes on a very large format press

    Behind the scenes on Heidelberg's largest format presses, where a single sheet is bigger than a table and the press still runs at production speed. Very large format offset is a specialist world with a handful of machines worldwide. Rare access, filmed by the manufacturer.

    Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG 2019

  • Video thumbnail: A digital press printing short-run packaging 2:46
    Printing and Converting

    A digital press printing short-run packaging

    A digital press that puts down liquid ink electrostatically rather than laying down toner, so every sheet can be different with no plate change. It bridges the gap between digital flexibility and offset quality. Useful contrast to the offset presses elsewhere in this feed.

    HP 2019

  • Video thumbnail: A folder-gluer turning flat blanks into cartons 1:10
    Printing and Converting

    A folder-gluer turning flat blanks into cartons

    A survey of a folder-gluer range from the smallest to the largest width, showing the module sections that get added for different box styles. Machines in this class reach up to about 700 meters a minute. Good orientation before watching the individual close-up clips.

    BOBST 2015

  • Video thumbnail: A compact folder-gluer folding and gluing cartons 1:09
    Printing and Converting

    A compact folder-gluer folding and gluing cartons

    Flat printed blanks go in and finished folded, glued cartons come out, travelling through the machine faster than you can follow. Folder-gluers in this family run at hundreds of meters a minute. Everything you have ever unboxed came off one.

    BOBST 2015

  • Video thumbnail: High speed packaging printing on a sheetfed press 0:49
    Printing and Converting

    High speed packaging printing on a sheetfed press

    Twenty-one thousand sheets an hour, which is close to six sheets every second, each one printed in multiple colors and stacked in perfect register. At that speed the sheet is airborne for most of its journey through the press. Fifty seconds of the fastest sheetfed offset printing in the world.

    Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG 2023

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