Dampening Rollers

Has anyone tried Westlands Weroaqua dampening rollers
or the new
Werodamp Lototec roller.


Lototec = Hydrophobic coatings for pan rollers in dampening systems
What is the connection between the lotusflower and Westland GummiwerkeGmbH & Co. KG? A great deal, becausethe way water rolls off a lotus leaf forms thefundamental principle of a new develop-ment by the company, which is based inMelle near Osnabrück. Named LotoTec,this is a patented new coating for West-land’s Werodamp damping roller.The key feature of this roller is that it is hy-drophobic in the way that teflon is but thatit is nevertheless suitable for use as a damp-ing roller. Perversely, it quite deliberatelyexploits this apparent contradiction, thefact that teflon is water repellent, to offerthe printer important damping benefits—of which more later.


I'm wondering how much of an advantage it would give you when printing IPA free compared to using standard dampening rollers with a Shore A range of 20 -22

 

No one out there use this special coated westland roller?

 

westland

Weird you should post this I used to buy blankets that come from this company.....I searched the web for the home page of westland , interesting!
they were really good blankets , I bought them from K&E at the time and I believe I was paying 110 a blanket for the 40"

"IMC Perfect Dot Blankets

Perfect dot blankets is the proven high - quality product supplied as standard equipment with all new presses. The Prefect dot blankets has optimal ink transfer, excellent dot reproduction and provides superior quality on screen and solids. The Perfect Dot blanket with its consistent manufacturing and high durability is a blanket printers can count on."

so you are using this damp roller? or just looking for feedback?

 

Stevo,
Just looking for feedback, . To see if anyone who is using it has noticed a decrease in water pan speed when printing alcohol free compared to the "normal" IPA free rollers.

Will be choosing either westland or Katsura

Westlands design goes against all the other water roller manufacturer's out their.
As you know a water rollers are ment to be hydrophelic. I'm just concerned what reactions will I get if I use westlands Hydrophobic water roller and use a metering roller cleaner that is designed to keep a roller Hydrophelic.

 

they must have tech people , right?
I went on there website or actually the distributor of these products. Pretty interesting.....

 

http://www.westland.eu/download/files/DD_EN_Ausgabe17-2008_Special_LotoTec.pdf

Very interesting.

It would seem though the price I am getting is for the standard wero aqua westland roller and not the Newer Loto-tec roller.
I havent checked yet but I don't think they utilise the Loto-tec roller on the shinohara..

 

Hey Luke,

Bottcher developed the technology (ProAqualis). You are right it uses a similar surface that repels the water like teflon but is really like Viton. Extremely chemical resitant. The ProAqualis is running in the Australian market & Globally with huge success and extremely well and if you are considering IPA free it is a must have. Check them out. If you are considering it for a Shinohara.......?
Certainly on other presses such as Heidelberg, KBA & Roland presses they work great. Japanese presses in my opinion do IPA free very well. Standard IPA free rubber compounds are also available, but the new ones I mentioned are extremely good.

 

NGR,
I take it you are a Aus Bottcher rep?

We have ordered some rollers just for testing purposes, but we were informed after we paid that they can't make the roller compound to our specification even though in the begining they said they could.

we wanted Shore A to be 22 - 23 for both rollers and both to be IPA fee compounds

The roller manufacturer is giving us
Westland wero aqua metering roller (possible shore A of 24 -25)
Katsura water form (shore A of 25) Normal compound
I cannot understand why you can't use a Westland wero aqua roller for water form. They insist it is never used and not needed on this machine. for IPA free print

The problem with the suppled 25A shore, will be it only has a few degrees of hardening before it is out of our range for IPA free printing.

 

Hi Luke,

Yep you are right. I am a rep!.
Yes the compound is only available in a 25 shore A, but this is perfect. 20-22 is an American standard for IPA free printing, but time moves on, things change and technology also moves on. The ProAqualis as with the Wera Aqua does not get used in the Water form position. It is only designed for the pan or metering position. It was developed to combat issues in the European market with regard to a phenomonen called "Radial Swelling" caused by the Sub Alcohol founts on the market, the inks employed and most commonly in pan roller position due to the longer exposure times in the water. It is no longer needed to have 22 shore rollers for IPA free printing, but a combination of the right rollers, right fount and well maintained press with roller & damper settings regularly checked.

We have had great success in Australia with this new technology and also the older IPA free compounds, it's just that the ProAqualis is much more stable and infinite results obtained.

I don't understand why your supplier has to use 2 different manufacturers for the dampers? Anyway it will be interesting to see how you go. What state are you in?

 

You still battling Luke. Would you like me to help?

 

Luke we have a 4 col shino and have water issues. Imbalance side to side. Noticed a few of your posts here and there. We are running Varn AlcoFree with Katsura rubber. How stable is your machine running with ipa? Regards, Dave

 

Dave,

What size shino are you running?
I take it you are using the Varn fount without IPA ?
Your water inbalance from side to side, please explain further. I know that the 52's need to have the metering roller set lighter on the gear side as during the day when it heats up you tend to get scumming on that side if you have the metering roller set the same both sides.
I have seen a shino 52 run IPA free on polyester plates and out perform a high quality fount with 10% IPA using the following:
Westland alcohol free water rollers
Fountain solution that contains no alcohol substitutes.+ 0% IPA
metering roller scewed between 1 - 2 instead of the standard 5.
Water form to water pan steel 4mm

Water form to plate 3mm

Ink forms to oscillators 4.5mm

Ink forms to plate 3mm

 

What happened to Luke?

 

It has been over a year since I have run that particular machine in production. I found the dampening system to work as it should once it was set up correctly. Correctly set up there should be no side to side imbalance. Always run the gear side of the metering roller with less pressure to componsate for heat buildup issues during the day.
Most of my time on the press we ran 8% - 10% IPA. It was only in the last few months that we trialed reduced to zero IPA; although at that stage it still had the standard compound rollers in it so anything below 4% - 5% IPA brought about various problems.

It was another venture that had me asking about the westland rollers..

 

PM sent.

 

How did you go Dave?