When Your Job is Also Your Hobby
Nicola Bologna, 66, has decades of experience in the graphic arts industry. He began his career in the 1980s as a developer at a company that offered finishing solutions for digital printing. Today, he is Product Manager for Web Inspection Solutions at Muller Martini. In this blog post, he explains why his job is also his hobby and why the WI8 Web Inspection from Hunkeler is an absolute must, especially for inspecting digitally printed package inserts for pharmaceuticals.
I don’t come from a family background in the graphic arts industry. My dream job as a child was to be a fighter pilot. That didn’t work out, but my love of flying stayed with me. After parasailing for a while in my youth, I got my private pilot’s license to fly single-engine airplanes. I also enjoy flying small drones. As far as my career is concerned, I still feel like I’m living my dream, since I’ve been passionate about electronics design and software programming ever since high school – I feel very lucky that my job is also my hobby.
In the graphics arts industry since the 1980s
I’ve been working in the printing industry since the late 1980s. Building on my earlier experience in electronics development and software programming, I worked for an Italian company that combined its typographic expertise with electronic automation to offer finishing solutions for digital printing. I designed custom machine control systems and the electronic circuit boards used in these systems (main controller, axis controllers, I/O interfaces), as well as the associated firmware. At the time, this company was a local competitor to the up-and-coming Hunkeler AG – however, it is no longer in business today.
One of my first interesting projects in the field of paper finishing for digital printing was a pre- and post-processing system for an IBM 3827 cut-sheet printer, in which an anthropomorphic Yaskawa robotic arm (six degrees of motion) which, when needed, automatically loaded stacks of A4 paper into the printer’s input trays, retrieved the printed brochures from the output stack, and bound them – by stapling if fewer than 25 sheets or by hot-gluing along the spine if more than 25 sheets – before stacking them directly onto a cart.
This machine was unveiled in October 1989 at the XPLOR trade show in Nashville, Tennessee (USA), in collaboration with IBM at their booth. Although the concept was patented, it never led to a finished product – probably because it was too advanced for its time. To be honest: when I see the excitement surrounding today’s COBOTS, I can’t help but smile when I think about how we embarked on this path more than 35 years ago…
A pioneer in web inspections
In the early 1990s, I was involved in a transaction project that was large by the standards of the time. Italian Telecom completely redesigned its billing process and became the first company in Europe to use the brand-new Siemens Nixdorf 2140 Twin-Duplex printing system – an NDX toner-based system with Siemens-patented laser-LED heads – for its new dynamic billing. Approximately 30 production lines were deployed for this purpose. This project marked the beginning of the first fully integrated system for verifying production integrity and for monitoring and tracking, which checked every page and document produced throughout the entire production cycle – including a dynamic rejecting function at the output of the envelope-stuffing machines, for bad documents to be rejected and reported to be reprinted.
In early 1997, at Telecom’s request, we began verifying production quality, particularly the dynamic color range. In collaboration with an external company that had extensive experience in image processing for the first web inspection system, we developed the first web inspection system. At the end of 1997, we tested the first prototypes of what is now known as the WI8 Web Inspection. Both the tracking and inspection solutions have been continuously refined and improved ever since.
Joining Hunkeler 20 years ago
In 2006, I began my career at Hunkeler – initially as part of a partner company that designed, developed, and manufactured web inspection and tracking solutions. Starting in 2011, I joined the Italian team as a full-time employee when our department was acquired by Hunkeler. I We developed solutions for web inspection and tracking, and in 2014 – when the Italian team transitioned from a largely independent business unit to becoming fully integrated into the Hunkeler organization – I took on the role of Product Manager for web inspection and tracking solutions. When Muller Martini acquired Hunkeler, I retained my role as Product Manager for web inspection solutions.
I love technical challenges, and the solutions – especially the web inspection system – have continuously evolved over the years to remain state-of-the-art and to meet the many demanding requirements arising from highly complex projects worldwide.
Impressed by the high degree of automation
I find it fascinating how the printing industry has transformed over the years from analog offset printing to an increasing reliance on digital printing. It’s impressive to observe the development of postpress machines, such as the latest Starbook BD8 bookmaking line, which is capable of converting a continuous paper stream – printed at 250 meters per minute – into book blocks. At the end of the machine, these are cut perfectly at right angles at intervals of less than two seconds, exit in sorted order, and are ultimately fed directly into the downstream Muller Martini binding process. The level of automation achieved is impressive, and it is clear why, given the high demand for quality products in such a highly automated, high-speed environment, real-time print quality control as well as the monitoring and tracking of production integrity are essential requirements.
With the Hunkeler product portfolio, Muller Martini is now the only company that can offer a complete set of natively integrated solutions for such demanding production processes – from white paper rolls to finished bound books, as well as for many other complex postpress applications in the graphic arts industry.
Years of hands-on experience with web inspections
My core responsibility today is the web inspection product line, which I oversee, along with the associated documentation and marketing materials. In this role, I keep a close eye on product development and plan it based on requirements from the market, the application area, partners, and customers. I also keep an eye on upcoming technological developments that can make the solution more powerful, more accurate, smarter, and more user-friendly.
I’m also responsible for the technical management of key OEM projects in the field of web inspection with some of our printing press partners, and I support our development department in implementing new customer requirements and addressing the associated challenges. For several years, I personally conducted web inspections and provided on-site support for many customer projects worldwide. Since moving into product management, however, I’ve gradually delegated these tasks to our systems specialists.
Web inspection is a system that fits seamlessly into the printing process and can be integrated directly into the printing units. To this end, we offer certified integrations with printing units from Canon, HP, and Ricoh. However, we also provide an external standalone solution, which is typically installed in the paper path of the production line directly behind the printer.
An absolute must for package inserts
Web inspection is extremely important. Given the constantly rising productivity, coupled with ever-increasing speeds in digital printing and post-press processing, it has become impossible to verify and maintain product quality and integrity without using automated devices such as the WI8 Web Inspection and HCP tracking. These systems are capable of monitoring production quality and integrity in real time, page by page, for every single page. Inspection and tracking are becoming an absolute must in many areas of application – such as pharmaceutical printing, which ranks among the most demanding applications in the entire printing industry.
The printed paper is exceptionally thin, the text is small and often set in non-Latin scripts, and production must run at full speed. The legally required 100-percent inspection is not a random sampling process. Every package insert requires a complete, verifiable traceability path from the print layout design to the finished product.
Seamless Integration
Hunkeler’s solution is not a single device, but a complete quality chain. The WI8 Web Inspection checks every printed package insert over its entire surface with pixel-level accuracy against a validated reference pattern (“Golden Sample”). It reliably detects defects down to the submillimeter range, even on the thinnest pharmaceutical papers. Since the inspection is pixel-based, it works equally well with Latin, Cyrillic, Thai, Chinese, Japanese, and Arabic scripts, as well as with images and illustrations – in both black-and-white and full color. HCP Tracking identifies each package insert using a unique identifier and tracks it through every stage of production, thereby creating the audit trail required by regulatory authorities at the individual-item level.
Hunkeler’s post-processing systems – cutting, stacking, and folding – can be seamlessly integrated into the inspection and tracking process. They automatically divert non-conforming copies to the reject bin without operator intervention and ultimately generate reprints to ensure orders are fulfilled in full. The result is a uniform, consistent quality environment rather than a patchwork of hand-offs between different vendors.
An extremely flexible device
The WI8 Web Inspection system is an extremely flexible device that uses state-of-the-art CIS scanners to capture printed images in full color and high resolution (600 DPI) – even when printing with variable page lengths (DynaScan). Synchronization occurs directly with the printed pages from the scanners’ continuous image stream (DirectSync), ensuring that every single printed page is captured in its full width and length, even with optional OverScan.
With these features, the web inspection system can automatically check the web, record and play back every captured image from the last 30 minutes of production, display any detected defects for the operator to review, and, if necessary, optionally archive such recorded images in an external storage device for certification purposes or for later evaluation in combination with the tracking solution.
From work to hobby
At the end of a strenuous workday, I set aside my work on technical challenges in the field of business applications and start tinkering with personal electronics and/or software projects. For example, I designed and built a custom MIDI foot controller with ten pedals and just a small Arduino controller for my daughter – she’s a musician, singer, and songwriter who sometimes comes to me with very specific requests for her stage performances.
Yours,
Nicola Bologna
Product Manager, Web Inspection Solutions Muller Martini
