BOBST ACCUCHECK: Revolutionizing quality control in label production

In today’s highly competitive label printing industry, quality and efficiency are paramount. They’re core strengths that set companies ahead of the competition, so remain a key priority for converters of every size.

To support customers across the label and packaging industries, BOBST has developed solutions that address these critical needs, including the BOBST ACCUCHECK system. This innovative technology offers unparalleled inline quality control, fully integrated with BOBST Narrow-Mid Web All-in-One solutions provided for end-to-end and profitable label production.

The following Q&A with Benjamin Carron, Technology Product Marketing Director, sheds light on how the ACCUCHECK system is transforming label production, offering a unique competitive advantage in the market for converters.

1. Benjamin, what exactly is ACCUCHECK?
"ACCUCHECK system is BOBST's proprietary solution for inline quality control in label production.
Consider this: everything starts with millions of ink drops produced by hundreds of thousands of nozzles, when printing a label with inkjet technology. If just one nozzle malfunctions, it could result in thousands of defective or imperfect labels at production speeds of up to 100m per minute. This has the potential to generate vast quantities of waste.

ACCUCHECK addresses this challenge by providing a fully integrated, inline quality control system. It delivers automatic calibration and 100% inline inspection, ensuring minimal production waste, avoiding costly reprints, reducing dependence on highly skilled operators and maximizing machine productivity."

2. Does ACCUCHECK influence overall production efficiency?
"Yes, it does! ACCUCHECK significantly enhances production efficiency by automating calibration and inspection processes. This automation leads to substantial reductions in setup and calibration times, enabling faster and smoother production runs. Typically, downtime is reduced by 90%, improving overall efficiency. For instance, calibration time can be cut from hours to minutes, potentially reducing downtime by up to 44 hours per month*."

3. How effective is ACCUCHECK in maintaining consistent production quality?
"ACCUCHECK ensures consistent product quality through its 100% inline inspection and automatic calibration capabilities. It prevents defects and maintains high quality across all labels produced. The system uses high-performance cameras to detect imperfections as small as 0.15 mm2 and color variations as minor as 1 DEc, helping achieve near-zero defect rates. This level of precision contributes to maintaining exceptional quality standards throughout the production process. Without the need for additional setup, operators simply prepare the press as usual, start printing a job, and ACCUCHECK automatically initiates the inspection process."

4. How does ACCUCHECK contribute to reducing production waste & costs?
"The implementation typically results in a significant reduction in production costs, strengthening the bottom line of printing activity through reducing material waste, shortening setup times, and eliminating the need for reprints and returns."

5. How does BOBST ACCUCHECK communicate in terms of output the level of quality reached during production?
"After having inspected a job, ACCUCHECK generates quality reports that are accessible in near real-time through BOBST Connect - our cloud-based digital platform designed to orchestrate and optimize all aspects of our customers’ production processes, enhancing workflow by providing essential tools for control, monitoring, and analysis.

The quality reports come in two formats, one for the converter and one for the brand owner. The reports offer not only detailed insights such as the percentage of accepted labels, and eventually any discarded ones, but also counts of accepted and rejected repeats if any, along with samples or previews of detected defects according to the sensitivity levels set by the operator."

6. Why inline?
"End-to-end label production is the main solution we propose to overcome bottleneck during the printing and converting process. ACCUCHECK integrates seamlessly with BOBST's All-in-One ecosystem, significantly enhancing overall automation and therefore influencing the automation of calibration and inspection processes. It eliminates the need for highly skilled operators by providing a fully automated end-to-end production process for labels in a single pass. This integration ensures a streamlined workflow, improving efficiency and consistency throughout the production cycle."

7. Automatic calibration: how does it work?
"ACCUCHECK automates the calibration of print heads that are normally carried out manually, thereby increasing overall press productivity. There are three types of calibrations: angle and stitch, color uniformity, and color-to-color calibration. Without ACCUCHECK, these calibrations could result in a full shift of machine downtime for a single cluster change. However, with ACCUCHECK, this downtime is reduced to only two hours.

The Nozzle Compensation feature on ACCUCHECK detects faulty or defective jets and instructs the Digital Printing Unit (DPU) on how to compensate for them. It can detect complex issues like missing, intermittent, deviated, and clogged nozzles that are typically difficult to fix manually.

Automated calibration reduces downtime in four keyways:
- automatic head stitching for a perfect positioning of the cluster
- automatic color-to-color calibration
- automatic density uniformization along the full width
- automatic detection and compensation of faulty nozzles."