Thanks, Rob, very interesting!!!

This is what I always wanted to see: the tinplate lithography printing job.

What about the dimensions of the used sheetmetal?

Thickness: 0.1mm or 0.3mm?

Size: DIN A0 1189mm X 841mm (46.8" X 33.1") or what else?

Material: stainless steel or what else?

Is there any other video showing the cutting, stamping, assembly, etc.?

The layout of the two-page leaflet is extremely professional and its content is very informative for British Rail collectors.

Looks great on the press.

Darstaed Corridor Coaches Litho Printing

Like the printing process, congrats........ 

Thanks, Rob, very interesting!!!

This is what I always wanted to see: the tinplate lithography printing job.

What about the dimensions of the used sheetmetal?

Thickness: 0.1mm or 0.3mm?

Size: DIN A0 1189mm X 841mm (46.8" X 33.1") or what else?

Material: stainless steel or what else?

Is there any other video showing the cutting, stamping, assembly, etc.?

The layout of the two-page leaflet is extremely professional and its content is very informative for British Rail collectors.

Dear BetaNSP,

Thank you for your post. The size of the sheet is not DIN but determined by the size required by the items to be printed but limited by the width of the plate that can be accommodated on the machine and of course the diameter of the roll. That size ranges between 850 mm and 1000 mm long and/or wide. We only used 3 Tonns in this production which is very little so we had to take the sizes that the steel maker (of course an affiliate company to the printers) had in stock. Then we placed our designs accordingly on the plate. We have no choice but for us it does not matter.

Usual runs are 200 Tonns and above of standard sheet that is 0.22 mm thick, that is where millions of teaboxes and coockie tins are made off. Also hard liquor bottles are packed in fancy tinprinted containers.

If you do large productions like that you have to calculate carefully where to put the images and then of course it can be a great cost saving to have an area of 850 mm x 850 mm to 1000 x 1000 to play with, a difference of 30%. Each square inch not printed is 200,000 square inches loss of steel.

What matters for us is that we get the correct thickness (0.33 mm) and the correct hardness, the size we take as it comes.

The material is tinplate.

The machine you see here at work is an old one imported from Taiwan about 30 years old I guess. This is the oldest and slowest machine in that factory and my preferred one because everything is done by hand and therefore easy to control and above all easy to stop if something goes wrong. It can do everything from solid colours to off-set and the final lacquering too.

The modern machines where the large productions are done are of Japanese make and are enclosed, nothing is visible, no rolls, gears, chains or even the ink. the plates come out like a blurr and baking is by UV. No fun at all.

We will take pictures of the whole assembly process of the coaches and publish this so all can see how they are made.

If you are interested they will be put on our site :

https://www.facebook.com/Darstaed

Just copy the link and you are on, no need to be a Facebookie.

I will one of these days present these coaches on this forum as they are an excellent companion for the magnificent MTH or Ace Duchesses if you prefer tinplate coaches above plastic ones. They can be viewed at :

http://www.darstaed.com/products_b004.html

Cheers,

Andries

Hello Andries,

A great process to see - very interesting to see how the product is made. 

Keep up the great work !

all the best

David

PS - love the engine shed !!!

Hi Andries,

I appreciate very much your detailed description of the printing process with all the challenges related to this technique. Interesting is also your comparison (pros & cons) old printing method vs. modern machines. You mediated a well explained overview of the printing effort is needed in this tinplate toy train industry and you documented precisely the conditions, requirements and limitations. I understood that the key to ergonomic efficiency is in the preparation (particularly the design/layout optimization) with the goal to reduce useless scrap material. Any way, it is important for the tinplate community to continue the tradition of this old manufacturing method proven over generations. Congratulations to your well organized website, FB-blog and especially your PDF-formatted newletters.

Regards,

Johannis