Imagine this:  you’re making your grandmother’s family recipe for apple pie.  There’s the crust, the filling, and the topping, all working together to make an incredible dessert.  Each part of it has to be just right; too much nutmeg will overpower the cinnamon.  Too much flour in the crust will make it dry.  Not enough butter in the topping will make it too crumbly.

You can approach this task in two ways.  One: you can tinker, slowly adjusting each ingredient until it matches Grandma’s recipe.  It may take a bunch of wasted pies, but eventually, it’ll be close enough.  Or two: you can ask Grandma for her recipe and faithfully duplicate it.  She’s already found out what works; why keep tinkering?

You probably picked option two.  It’s just so much easier and doesn’t waste any pie!

At PCMC, we don’t want you to waste any pie… or product.  We provide recipes on the human machine interface (HMI) of your flexographic press.  When you run a product for the first time, it may involve some tinkering, just like Grandma did while perfecting her apple pie.  But once you get it right, you can save it for future runs.  Then, the next time you run this product, you already have all of the settings saved and ready to go.

Grandma was able to switch between making apple pie and cherry pie by referencing her recipes.  You can switch between products by using yours.  You can save multiple recipes on your HMI to seamlessly switch between products.  It’s just a few simple buttons to push to load a saved recipe.

You can also modify existing recipes to run similar products.  Let’s say you wanted to make a lattice apple pie instead of a French apple pie.  Many of the components will stay the same: the filling, the bottom crust, etc.  You just need to tweak the recipe for a different topping.  You can do the same thing with the recipes.  Just load an existing recipe, make the necessary adjustments, and save it as a new file name.  This will save you much of the initial tinkering that comes with running a new job.

We have seen substantial reductions in changeover time when customers have accurate recipes saved on their HMI.  When recipes are used in conjunction with proper preparation, organized workspaces, and an efficient workflow, changeover times are often cut in half.  Think of all the extra product you could be running!

Recipes reduce waste and downtime.  Grandma knew that… and Grandma’s pretty wise.