Brookfield AST-100 Viscosity Control Provides Rapid ROI
Announcement posted by John Morris Group 23 Feb 2016
Brookfield AMETEK, the world leader in viscosity measurement and control for more than 80 years has provided a multi-station viscosity control solution to Prairie State Group, a custom printer and laminator of flexible packaging and pressure sensitive labels near Chicago, IL.
- AST-100 Viscosity Control
Prairie State is a completely self-contained operation that includes state-of-the-art design capabilities, prepress functions, digital plate-making, laminating and printing. Their equipment gives them the luxury of handling all aspects of customer jobs in house and ensuring that their work is of the highest quality, cost competitive, and delivered on time without having to rely on outside sources. Their mission is to offer the highest level of customer satisfaction by efficiently providing industry leading quality, innovation, and cost effective packaging solutions to their clients.
For this reason, they have chosen Brookfield AMETEK in cooperation with Sun Chemical as strategic partners and have installed Brookfield’s AST- 100 MultiPlo Viscosity Control System. As the world’s largest producer of printing inks and pigments, Sun Chemical worked with Brookfield to supply a multi-station ink viscosity control system to allow higher efficiency when running their inks on Prairie States’ PCMC Evolution and Revolution presses. PCMC (Paper Converting Machine Company), a press manufacturer with over 85 years of experience in machine design, manufacturing, and service, regularly uses the Brookfield AST-100 for viscosity control on their presses. The collaborative products provided by these companies have given PSG a great running operation.
Because these presses were not originally supplied with viscosity controls, Brookfield’s experienced sales and service team was able to customise a system that integrated seamlessly. “Other than Brookfield’s superior products, we also demanded a strategic partner who could help us find a custom solution” – said Dan Doherty, Executive Vice President of Operations and Principal at Prairie State Group.
“Brookfield helped get us up and running as quickly and efficiently as possible and they have gone above and beyond in supporting us. In less than one year we have experienced a positive return on investment and will be able to increase our efficiency and productivity going forward with Brookfield on our side.”
“In printing, the name of the game is to keep the presses running” Doherty said. “By using Brookfield’s viscometers and partnering with Sun Chemical we have been able to reduce our ink costs with consistent runs. Very tight control of viscosity dramatically increases the mileage of the ink. Eliminating the need for most of our manual cup measurements also saves us money. It used to take almost one half hour just to measure and adjust the full eight stations. With the new control system that time is used elsewhere, while completely automating our process and maintaining ink consistency. Our operators tell us: “Finally, we can now open the presses up and let them run at full speed.” The consistency we get from Brookfield’s AST is also critically important when it comes to colour matching for our clients brands. We are using viscometers on 15 stations and couldn’t be happier with Brookfield. They have made an immediate impact on our return on investment within the first year.”
Learn more and Download our AST-100 Brochure
