Mercian Labels are recuiting in Cannock

Business is picking up and we are recruiting again!  If you are looking for an entry level office assistant or apprentice factory worker/ rewinder then please see the advertisments on our webpage.

[Photo courtesy of the good people at FreeDigitalPhotos.net]

The team at Edale involved in the new press - Peter, Louise, Adrian and Jeremy

A first for this labelling blog, a review and pictures of a new press!  Yesterday I was invited to Edale Ltd, one of the few UK press manufacturers left to see the new Edale Alpha Multi, an 8 colour flexo press with a very small footprint.  At Mercian Labels we run a new standard 4 colour Edale Alpha we bought in 2008, but the additional 4 print stations in this configuration is a new concept that has not been seen before, and showcases the engineering ingenuity that Edale has developed a reputation for.

The new Edale Alpha Multi - the long running standard Edale Alpha press in on the right, with the retrofit bolt on 4 colour 'multi' upgrade on the left. the web moves under the yellow footplate between the units

So this is the new press – a very different concept for meet a particular market – those label printers needing a high end specification press with the smallest footprint possible at a good value price thats much less than a comparable modular press.  Here you have an 8 colour press with a length of 4.5m, compared to a normal modular press with 8 colours thats about 8-9m long – a big space saving.  The amount of ‘metal’ is also significantly reduced, thus reducing the price.  Its an easy retrofit onto any existing Alpha press, or obviously you can buy a compete stack as it is.

the mechanical drive for the multi is shielded by the orange bar - which also makes a handy seat....

The version I saw was the very first unit, that had literally just come off the production line some days ago and was only powered up last week, so had a few minor modifications to be addressed, as is common with all development projects, but there were minor and trivial to fix. I also pointed out a couple of possible modifications to consider to improve the design, and as always they were very receptive to ideas.

You can continue to use 1 stack of 4 colours and bypass the other using a clever splicing system to easily change back and forth.  The print runs the left ‘multi’ stack first, then the main stack, then lamination and converting as appropriate.  It would seem sensible to set up the left ‘multi’ stack with CMYK UV permanently, and add water based spot colours on the main unit as needed, maybe with a UV varnish.  9 colours is the maximum I believe.

The registration wasnt bad either, quoted at +/- 0.15mm at 60m/min although due to the minor modification needed I couldnt see this in action at the time, but the registration at slower speed (40m/min) was good.

close up shot of the 8 colour demo label design with cross hairs of 0.15mm

This was the shot I took at the end of the demo of a the printed web – its not bad at all, but Edale assured me that it will be crack on perfect after the final press modifications are made, and from previous experience of dealing with them, I believe that to be likely.

Overall, this is a great piece of design, and should be an easy upgrade for those like us at Mercian with an existing 4/5 colour alpha.  In fact, its so innovative that it should really be nominated for an award somewhere, showing what the best of British engineering talent can design.

Yes you can buy cheaper 8 colour presses from developing countries, but as always you do get what you pay for, and this configuration is much,much cheaper than a new 8 colour modular press.

This one is destined for Kingfisher Labels as reported in the trade press here and here and I’m sure they will be pleased with their purchase.

Disclosure:- my company is a previous (satisfied) client of Edale Ltd, but we have no current involvement with them and I was not influenced or rewarded in any way (apart from some butties and a packet of crisps) for this piece.

Copyright: - these pictures and text are copyright of Mercian Labels – please feel free to link to this piece but please dont copy and use it without our permission

The National Memorial Arboretum is in South Staffordshire just off the A38 between Birmingham and Derby

We had visitors this weekend including a serving army officer, and took an opportunity on Saturday morning to visit the National Memorial Arboretum just a few miles north of us.

If you have never been, then I would recommend fitting it into your itinerary when next in the midlands.  Its a beautiful place and a fitting tribute to our country’s fallen.

dell mini 9 running ubuntu netbook remix

I’ve had problems recently connecting my Dell mini 9 using ubuntu netbook remix to a t-mobile  3G modem over bluetooth as previously blogged, which I think is related to this ubuntu bluetooth bug.  I had some time yesterday and set about finding a fix to this problem to enable me to get web access on the netbook anywhere I have my phone and a 3G cable.

The solution was to connect the phone to the netbook using a normal USB cable and select “PC suite transfer” on the nokia e90.  Then setup a new “mobile broadband” connection under system>network connections>mobile broadband, in my case t-mobile UK.  Then unplug and replug in the usb cable and the new t-mobile connection appears in the network connections icon in the top right of the page.  Click and it just connects.

I’ve been to lugradio live a couple of times, and am hoping that the new Oggcamp event will be the replacement FOSS social and networking event.  I’ve got relatives in Liverpool, so have it in my diary to visit Oggcamp 2010 this year.  Hopefully see you there!  If you want to catch up with me and discuss our experiences of open source soft3ware in a UK SME environment then please post a comment and we can try and meet.

I used a power meter to measure the electric draw of the PC using and not using miserware

Interested by some of Alan’s posts at the Open Sourcerer, I’ve been conducting an experiment in recent weeks with the Miserware power saving software that claims to save energy by better controlling CPU management.  I run a new (late 2009) pc with an Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 (4x 2.33) CPU with a 450w PowerCool 80+, and have given it a go.  However, I didnt rely on the software’s own claimed power savings, I put an electric meter between the PC’s plug and the socket, and directly measured the power usage over 3 weeks, both with and without the software installed, set at my current domestic electricity rate pkwh.

Here is my data:

What I did was to run the PC without the software installed for 4 days from 19-23 Jan, installed miserware from 23 Jan to 8 Feb, then ran the PC again from 8 Feb until today.  Congratulations to the miserware support though, when I had issues installing they were right on the ball, and FOC.

The results are pretty unimpressive.  Despite a claimed 15% power saving claimed by the software (sudo grep Estimated\ energy /var/log/* )  it actually made very little difference at all.  In fact, if you average out the estimated annual usage for the 2 periods without running miserware ((52.22+54.07)/2) = 53.15 and compare that to the annual cost running miserware of £51.77, you see a 2.7% power saving thats worth about £2.30 a year.  OK, its a saving, but its not worth a lot to me.

The scary observation is that if you leave a PC on 24/7, its going to cost you over fifty quid a year at current online dual fuel electricity tariff rates!

We have completed a trial of linerless labels - is this the future?

One of the really enjoyable parts of running a business with an innovation culture is that we are always experimenting with new products, and here is a preview of the our linerless self wound label stock.  Please forgive the fact that the image is back to front -  it was a proof of concept trial!

The reason why this could be very interesting is that there is no siliconised liner waste, which is a lot more environmentally friendly than normal label stock.  See our previous blogs on this subject .

the finished label reel, without perforations

There are obvious limitations to this concept, notably that you must perforate between labels leaving a ragged edge, and generally you must have a flat bottom to the labels, or be prepared to deal with the waste between labels as you remove them.

we can also make 4 colour process tamper evident linerless labels in the same way

Interestingly, we also found it easy to make a tamper evident CMKY process “thin film” tamper evident security label construction as well.

I’d be interested in any views of this concept.  No doubt its been done elsewhere before somewhere, but its interesting to try these things for ourselves and see what the reaction is.

security labels that leave permanent residue

Yesterday I was down in London and whilst travelling on the underground I took these 2 pictures of the residue left by security seals used to seal cabinets and fire hydrant areas.

at least 5 different seals have been tried here and left residue

Nice.

If you have an issue like this in your workplace, then take a look at our no residue Label Lock product range or watch the YouTube security labels video of them in action.

helmet sticker test.

Thanks to an inquiry from Australia yesterday from an earlier blog post, I thought I’d clarify the position in respect of the safest adhesive to use for hard hat and helmet labels.  The history here is that in the 1979’s there were stories of motorcycle accidents where helmets were providing insufficient protection to the wearer’s head in a crash as the adhesive had significantly damaged the helmet surface and weakened it.  You can read an interesting page on the subject here.

I tried to get a definitive answer to this question in 2007 from the EU technical manager for Fasson about the hard hat and helmet  label adhesive we commonly specify for this application , and got this reply.  “The history is that many years ago, during the 1970’s, polycarbonate crash helmets were introduced for motorcycle riders, and some time after this there we some issues with stickers coated with solvent based adhesives causing a weakening of the polycarbonate, reducing the effectiveness of the helmet. SInce this came to light we have stipulated the use of solvent-free, waterbased acrylic adhesives such as our S692N for this type of application. Although waterbased, S692N has excellent water resistance and good resistance to UV light making it ideal for outdoor exposure. “.  Further consultation with an adhesive consultant suggested that any solvent based adhesive is a definite “no no”, normal hotmelts are undesirable, but any water based acrylic adhesive (used as standard on the vast majority of labelling material) is probably suitable, as are UV cured hotmelt adhesives (rare).   If you want further advice, then please contact us.