Gripper tips sm 102

Any one have any urethane gripper tips falling off on their sm 102? The press is 3 years old. Using Fogra approved wash and we are missing about 60 gripper tips, and still see the odd one delivered into the pile.

 

Urethane falling off the gripper tips is not too common. Even at the 100 million mark the gripper tips just wear out not just fall off. You may see a gripper tip here and there come off but 60 is a bit high I think. How many impressions are on your machine? UV?

 

We have about 40,000,000 and no UV. The tips are only falling off the imp. and 1st transfer. The wash we use is fogra approved for Baldwin and precision blanket washers, but now I find out that it has to be Heidelberg approved.
The thing is our Heidi tech soaked a new gripper in our wash for 2 days and cannot peel the tip off.

Thanks in advance for all replies
Tom

 

Common problem, we have since gone back to metal.

 

Print 101, did you ever determine what was causing them to fall off?

 

They started coming off randomly, we would only find out when we experienced doubling. It would cause an uneven setting across the bar. We would then just make do and set grippers as best we could to solve the fault and continue, as time goes on it would then get to a stage when it was to bad, that when we decided to go to metal and its been brilliant since.

Over time the solvents do attack the urethane, making it soft and it eventually eats through to the adhesive, but this only started happening after 2 years or so.


Funny thing is that our latest press has metal on the first 2 units, from there they are urethane tips. Makes you wonder when they test the machines, maybe they have issues and then just replace with metal before releasing the press into the market??? - "just my thoughts"

 

We have found it to be a common problem caused by using strong chemicals like acetone to deglaze blankets or scrub cylinders. The chemical melts the adhesive holding the urethane tips. Apparently Heidelberg put out a letter about eight years ago warning of this.