The TOSH Advantage
If you’ve taken the time to open this page and read it, I would like to thank you personally. My name is Mike Cuthbert, and I’ve been banging on to both Australian and New Zealand pad printers about TOSH machinery for years. If you were expecting a dry document of facts and figures alone, you haven’t found it! There is plenty of technical information elsewhere on the site, but at the heart of it this document was born from my passion for seeing that you don’t make the same mistakes I, and may other printers have made – not choosing the right pad print machinery for the job. A mistake that could make or break your business or project.
Since the first time I sat in front of a TOSH printer, I knew that I’d found something special. I’ve owned and run other brands of pad printing machinery, but I have never worked with something so elegantly designed, functional, and easy to run. TOSH machinery combines speed, flexibility and power unlike any other pad printing equipment I’ve seen before, or since. Every aspect is designed with purpose and functionality in mind.
Over the intervening years I’ve worked on hundreds of applications with customers whose skill levels range from expert to beginner. I’ve answered the question “Why should I buy a TOSH pad printing machine?” many, many times.
The fact is, there are heaps of reasons to trust your production to a TOSH machine. With this document I’ve tried to create an exhaustive list of those features that put them head and shoulders above their competitors. When you’ve had a chance to consider all of these, I hope that you will be able to step back and see that TOSH equipment is more than the sum of its parts. It has been designed from the ground up without compromise. That is the true TOSH advantage.
Unique Design Approach
Each piece of TOSH equipment is conceived, designed and constructed as a modular building block. There are no uni-tasking machines in the TOSH range. Instead, individual components can be combined in various configurations to achieve a wide variety of tasks with maximum efficiency. All models have a clear upgrade path in terms of speed and set-up flexibility. This means that you only buy the machine functionality you need for your task, and don’t pay for something you won’t use, but with the built in option for later expansion.
This approach results in elegant design solutions that satisfy a broad range of printing applications. There are plug in solutions for most applications so we do not need to re-invent the process for you, nor do we need to force a machine to do something it isn’t really capable of . TOSH equipment has the in-built flexibility to be configured specifically for your job.
Mechanical Advantages
Solid Cast Aluminium Alloy Chassis
TOSH designers prefer that every aspect of the machine serves its final purpose: printing. This includes the basic chassis of the machine.
One of the key aspects of accurate, high quality, high-speed printing is rigidity. Any torque induced whip and vibration through the machine can cause print distortion and mis-registration, forcing the operator to slow the machine down to achieve accuracy and consistency. In essence, these factors require you to baby the printing process along rather than printing as fast (and therefore as cheaply) as possible.
By employing a tough-as-nails cast aluminium alloy chassis TOSH starts off on the right foot. Many poorly engineered pad printers use a machined interior skeleton and then cover everything with a sheet metal box. Contrast that with a TOSH machine where every gram of material that goes into a TOSH pad printing machine serves a purpose. What purpose does a sheet metal housing serve? It can do nothing to temper the effects of all the torque forces inherent when running a machine at maximum speed, while a heavy duty machined aluminium casting eliminates these problems. Next time you see a lesser designed pad printer watch carefully when the pads compress onto the plate or product and I’ll bet you can see the machine front “yawn” as it flexes (I have seen both expensive European, and cheap Asian machines with this design flaw), how can a machine maintain accurate pressure or registration if its whole structure flexes under pressure?
All Electric Drive and Function
Every piece of TOSH equipment is electric. No compressed air is necessary to run any of our printing heads or conveying accessories. You will find more information related to stepper motors and precision control below, but simply focusing on the lower cost of electricity instead of the high cost of compressed air is of significant value to your business.
Let us start with the simplicity of a single plug. As long as you have a standard 240 volt 10amp outlet nearby you can run your TOSH equipment, there is no need to plumb in air. This makes the machine substantially more mobile, as production demands change you can move your machine to where it is most needed. For instance, the addition of a TOSH machine to a clean room environment is a snap. Just wheel it in and plug in to a spare power point and away you go.
Being all-electric, preventative maintenance on TOSH equipment is almost eliminated. Without pneumatic cylinders and their associated issues TOSH equipment requires very little care. There is no filters to worry about, water or oil in air lines, seal failures, gummed up valve banks or any of the other break-downs common in pneumatic machines.
TOSH machines are quiet. Compressed air can be a substantial contributor to the overall noise pollution in your printroom. Quiet electric drives keep the dB rating low, making your printroom a better and safer place to work.
TOSH machines are consistent in terms of speed and force. Once you’ve programmed a TOSH machine, the cycle remains the same until you change it. If you’ve ever set up a job on a pneumatic pad printer you’ll know that changing the stroke speed often (and frustratingly) changes the pad stroke pressures onto the plate and product because of the inherent lag in making a pneumatic cylinder change direction. As well as this, variations in compressed air line pressure and volume can affect print cycle speed and print quality. With an electric drive you are guaranteed smooth consistent application of force even at extreme machine cycle rates.
It’s very unlikely we are going to run out of electricity in modern day Australia, but running out of compressed air at the end of a dropper line 30 metres away from your compressor is another matter all together!
Linear Guideways
In order to take full advantage of the robust construction of our printer chassis, as well as the power and speed of our all electric stepper motors, TOSH machines only use the best linear bearings for motion control.
A linear guideway consists of a hardened steel rail and a saddle with re-circulating ball bearings. Many of you may know of these products by various brand names such as THK or Thompson. Bear with me as I go into a little more detail as to why TOSH use them and why linear guideways provide superior control and performance.
Linear guideways can achieve higher precision linear motion when compared with a traditional pad printer construction using slide shafts. Compared with these older technologies the coefficient of friction for a linear guideway is about 1/50th. Because of the way the saddle is captured and loaded on the rail, linear guideways can take loads in both the vertical and horizontal directions. This greatly enhances accuracy of movement as well as stability when under load.
High Positional Accuracy
When a load is supported on a linear motion ball bearing guideway, the frictional contact between the load and the bed is a rolling contact rather than a sliding one. The coefficient of friction is therefore about 1/50th of that in a slide contact and so the difference between dynamic and static friction in a TOSH designed pad printer is very small. Therefore, there is minimal slippage while the load is moving, which translates into greater print position repeatability and more accurate colour registration.
Long Life with High Motion Accuracy
With a traditional slide construction, inadequate lubrication (and you know how it is – maintenance is always on that a long list of Things To Be Done) causes wear between the contact surfaces which over time become increasingly inaccurate. In contrast the rolling contact used in TOSH printers has little wear, therefore machines achieve a long life AND maintain accurate motion with minimal maintenance, ensuring the longevity of your investment.
High Speed Motion with Low Driving Force
There is so little friction that only a small driving force is needed to move the print head. This allows TOSH to size motors based on the force needed for the print job, not for overcoming friction.
What it all boils down to in terms of a TOSH pad printer is this: undesirable movement of the print head caused by chassis flex or bearing friction is minimised or completely eliminated. This improves print quality and allows the machine to run at much higher production cycle speeds – have you ever seen a pad printer running at over 3000 print cycles per hour? I have, and it was a TOSH! With all the practical engineering built into it, a TOSH printing head is going to go exactly where you program it to, and at the speed you want it to travel. It can reverse direction, accelerate or decelerate without taxing the drive motor or creating unwanted vibration.
It’s not surprising then that TOSH machines can boast print tolerances that typically run better than +/- 0.01MM per colour. Even more, accuracy does not degrade over time due to machinery wear either as quickly, or to such a degree, as traditional methods of printing head motion mechanics.
Maintenance on a linear guideway consists of simply applying clean grease through a standard nipple about once a year and cleaning the rails with solvent to remove any dust and debris that have accumulated – how easy is that!
Stepper Motor Driven
All TOSH machinery is stepper motor driven.
TOSH was the first company in the industry to employ stepper motors on its standard equipment. The first all electric TOSH machine was introduced in 1984. That gives TOSH more than 25 years of experience installing, programming and servicing cutting edge electric pad printing equipment. For other brands motor driven machinery is a complex and untried change of direction, for TOSH an all electric driver is a tried and proven engineering tradition.
Properly programmed, stepper motors provide precise control over speed, stroke and force. Once a TOSH machine is programmed to go a certain distance, at a certain speed it will do this until you change the program. This is clearly untrue of pneumatic systems which are subject to variations in air volume and pressure. (A detailed description of our controls package is discussed in the Electronic Advantages section).
Stepper motors are incredibly reliable and require no specific maintenance. When compared with pneumatic components stepper motors are substantially more reliable. There are no wear components in stepper motors, no seals and definitely no risk of contamination with dirty air.
Stepper motors are simple and inexpensive. Think of the process as a dial divided into 100 steps. The controller tells the stepper motor to go clockwise or counter clockwise a certain number of steps. It could be 1 or 10,000. The motor moves the described number of steps and stops until it receives further instructions from the controller. This is all done with an electrical impulse, there are no valves to adjust and no mechanical stops to fiddle with. Every aspect of the machine set-up is made simple, because every single control is at the operator’s fingertips via a touch screen.
Stepper verses Servo Motors
I’m frequently asked why TOSH use stepper motors instead of servo motors. Servo motors are a great technology for motion control in many applications, but the greater technology does not translate into operational advantages when applied to pad printer design. Stepper motors can do everything required for printer accuracy more simply and more cost effectively.
Stepper motors and servo motors are very similar. They are both electric motors with drive shafts that rotate at a programmable RPM and produce a certain amount of torque. The main difference is in the open-loop controls of the stepper motor versus closed-loop controls of servo drives. On the face of it, constant feed-back provided by encoders to the servo controller about their shaft location seems unquestionably like a good thing. In reality, it provides no operational advantage in terms of printer control accuracy or efficiency.
This is why: The feedback loop of a servo motor is designed to correct for positioning errors as the motion is occurring. For instance, if we told the printer to stroke 50mm in print position and it encountered an issue the servo controller would continue to push the motor until one of three (or four) things happen.
- One, it reached the 50mm position because the obstacle was removed (or crashed through!).
- Two, a programmed time out occurred.
- Three, the motor over loaded and the servo controller told it to idle, or brought the machine home.
- Or lastly, in theory the motor could continue to beat its head against the wall until it burned out.
With a stepper, the motor runs through the programmed coordinates provided by the controller. If the motor encounters an obstacle that it cannot over come, like over compressing the pad on the part, it will slip. The TOSH controller tells the pad to retreat to home position and then a simple position reset allows the machine cycle to continue. No damage occurs to the motor, or to the electronics.
In a real life pad printing situation the only common blockage of movement that would cause a loss of steps, or take advantage of the feed back of a servo encoder, is when the pad is being over compressed on the plate or on the part. It is precisely at these times that you want the machine to “slip”, not continue to try to push past the over compression point. Why?
Let’s say your machine is designed to produce a certain amount of pad force; 250 newtons for example. The entire structure of your machine is built to work comfortably at that force. Let’s now say your operator has mistakenly chosen a pad twice as hard as the one typically used for a job. In order to compress this pad the same distance, it your machine may need 400 newtons of force instead of 200 newtons to compress the pad. Would it be wise for the drive motor to continue to try and compress the pad and possibly damage the structure of your machine, or worse damage the servo motor itself? Of course not, and any well programmed servo motor would be programmed not do so. But what then, is the advantage of the servo motor with it’s encoder when a stepper motor will respond automatically in precisely the same way? None.
The other common objection is that stepper motors could lose steps during the process of counting ‘movement’. This is extremely unlikely in a properly sized system. Nevertheless the TOSH controller keeps track of the home position and makes adjustments if and when necessary to ensure accuracy. This is done with two simple proximity sensors, rather than an encoder.
Another common point is that servo motors can work at higher speeds. While true, it is irrelevant when comparing pad printers because TOSH already manufacture the fastest pad printing machinery in the world. Our practical speed bump is not stepper motors, but the physical limitations of pad printing itself; like part delivery and handling by the operator or production line. In fact, the excellent “low speed” torque is ideally suited to pad printing – speed is relative after all.
Combine all the technical reasons with the fact that stepper motors are significantly more cost effective, and it becomes clear why TOSH have chosen stepper technology for their world leading pad printing machinery design.
True U Shaped Motion
The motion of a traditional pneumatic pad printer is driven by two cylinders. A horizontal cylinder moves the pad carriage and the cups front to back, and a vertical cylinder moves the pads up and down. This motion is often depicted in literature as “U” shaped. In practice the cylinder slams down onto the plate, up to home, forward to print position then down onto the part. It would be better described as an inverted box which, by its shape directs all the momentum of the machine into jarring stop points (the corners in the cycle) creating vibration, hence the need in all pneumatic machines for mechanical motion dampeners at the end of each stroke. This results in poor print quality when cycling at higher speeds, which most manufacturers address by slowing the machine down – what a silly idea!
TOSH has approached the issue differently – with a better machine design that produces a true “U” shaped motion.
The TOSH stepper motor drive moves a main cam either by a toothed belt, or via a direct drive gearbox depending on the model. This cam moves the pads both vertically and horizontally simultaneously, through the doctoring motion, eliminating those hard ‘stop’ points that create vibration. The machine cycles in a smooth, easy motion allowing TOSH machines to run 30-50% faster than other machines, while appearing to run more slowly because there are no machine shaking stops and starts. This innovation not only improves print quality and output efficiency, it also reduces wear and tear on your machine.
Suspended Cliché Support
TOSH plate carriers are suspended, creating an open clear space under the plate. What does this mean for you?
It simply means more room. Room for your part, room for your jig, room for your hands or a part conveyor. If you’re printing a small image in the middle of a big part, our competitors will want to sell you a big (expensive) machine to do the job. Not so with TOSH equipment. Even the smallest TOSH machines are wide open under the plate carrier, so you can reach into the middle of a large part that would be impossible to print otherwise. That means you can invest in a TOSH machine just big enough to print your image, not super-sized to accommodate the part!
Flexible Plate and Cup Support
On TOSH equipment you have a blank slate to set up your ink cups and pads where you want them. A TOSH machine isn’t simply a four colour, 90mm machine with a fixed pitch. You can move your plates and cups around on the plate carrier where you need them and you can mix and match cup and plate sizes to suit your job.
Eco Friendly
It’s simple: All electric = low impact on the environment, and your budget.
Compressed air is one of the largest secret sources of waste. Its generation, use and storage is incredibly inefficient on every level. Pneumatic machinery requires the user to take a perfectly functional power source; electricity, and convert it into another form, compressed air. If you’ve stood near a working compressor, you’ll know how much energy is wasted. That noise your hearing, and that heat you’re feeling is pure unadulterated wasted energy. Then, you need to “condition” this new power with a refrigerated dryer so that it doesn’t destroy your machinery down the line with water in the air. A chiller is exactly what it sounds like, an air conditioner for your compressed air. How much does that cost to run day in and day out?
Once it leaves the storage tank, compressed air fills your factory lines and, well… who can say that their air lines don’t have a single leak? In a typical set-up, up to 30% of compressed air is lost through leaks both small and large before it even gets to the printer - air that has cost you money to supply!
Even the smallest of TOSH machines, the MiMicro, will reduce your operating costs from day one — and that’s without factoring in compressor maintenance or installation of new air lines for additional machines. And, as the size of your TOSH pad printer increases, so do your daily savings.
Proprietary Controls and Software
TOSH has developed pad printing machinery unlike any on the market, and therefore uses proprietary controls and software to drive all their printers and conveying accessories. These are not generic off the shelf controllers with an interface that could be adapted to run a bottle filling machine, or a pad printer! TOSH controllers are designed specifically to run the machines printing cycle, so it’s no surprise they incorporate everything you ever wanted to program your machine to do, but couldn’t.
Thirty years of continuous development, field testing and improvements have not only led to the most comprehensive controls package in the pad printing industry. But the built in advantage of proprietary software is that it gives you sustainable and stable accessory upgrade path for your machine.
Built in Upgrade Path
In modern manufacturing, production requirements change constantly. A clear advantage of using purpose-designed controller software is the ability to incorporate a viable upgrade path (within physical capacity) into every model. Today a table top machine with a two position indexer exactly suits your needs for that new product line. A year from now you may wish for a high speed rotary table to keep up with demand for your new product. Rather than struggling to incorporate a third party accessory, or worse, replace the entire machine, we can offer you a genuine TOSH accessory upgrade. We plug it in, activate the software module and get you back to work immediately. Every TOSH machine comes with built in controls for a range of conveyors and part positioning devices which, when you think about it, seems so sensible.
Complete Cycle Control
TOSH printer and controller design gives you unparalleled control of the print cycle through the touch screen control panel. This includes:
- Independent Speed Control in Every Axis of Motion. There are 6 motions in every pad printing cycle. Doctor forward, doctor backward, pad down over plate, pad up over plate, pad down over part and pad up over part. You know how critical these speeds are to a quality print, a tweak to one or another can be the difference between a stressful ‘borderline’ quality print and a absolutely perfect one. This being so, why do many manufacturers ignore these controls, or put them out of reach of the operator? On a TOSH machine, they’re at your finger tips.
- Independent Delays and Timers in Every Axis of Motion. It’s frustrating to have to slow down the whole print cycle when all you really want is a fraction of a second delay over the part to tack off the ink for full image transfer. What if you want to pause on the part for a quarter of a second to allow the pad to conform to a difficult texture to achieve full ink transfer? With your TOSH machine you can program delays before ink pick up, onto the plate, before print and onto the part. I know it sounds like the washing machine argument; buy it because it has 50 cycles, of which you end up using two. But seriously, once you have used this flexibility to fine tune the print cycle, you will never want to work without it. It puts you in charge of driving the printing process, instead of the machine driving you.
- Independent Stroke Adjustment in 1MM Increments over the Plate and Part. Does your current machine use limit switches and knobs to adjust your strokes? Or even worse have no adjustment at all?! On a TOSH machine, if you need 1mm more or less compression, you adjust it through the touch screen and it’s done. Simple.
- Training and stepping Modes. Setting up your TOSH machine for a new job is so simple. Use the software to take all the guess work out of set-up; slowly jog the machine into position, hit enter, and the machine learns the pad stroke. Training mode allows you to quickly set up (and store) a new job, without the stress of having to put a fragile component or part under the pad to check if you have the stroke pressures just right! (Come on! Hands up who hasn’t done that and smashed the part and wrecked the pad? I’ve done it more than once on our old pneumatic machines...not happy!)
Similarly all motions of the machine can be run independently when the machine is put into stepping mode. Isolate doctoring, pad stroke, or indexing so you can see exactly what your machine is doing. This can be run at full speed, or in incremental steps.
Languages
TOSH machines are made to travel. They can be run in English, Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese, French and Swedish. You can toggle between these languages as needed.
Multi-Program Memory and Counters
Several programs can be stored in the memory of your TOSH machine for immediate recall allowing quick, easy repeat job set-up.
TOSH machines also have a number of useful counter functions built in. There is a life cycle counter for the machine itself, a batch counter, and a live “cycles per hour” count so you can calculate the expected production rate for a job or keep an eye on the print speed your operator is achieving.
Easy to Automate
TOSH make it easy to integrate their equipment into your existing production lines. Every TOSH machine has all the necessary input and output points built-in for easy automation. If you are using TOSH conveyor accessories it’s even easier. Just mount the accessory on the machine, add the driver card, call up the program that is pre-loaded into the controls package, and start printing.
All pad printers are NOT the same
I’ve often heard the argument “all pad printers are the same” to justify the purchase of cheap Asian machinery. Cheap machinery is never the best option; it’s less efficient, less reliable, less versatile, poorly programmed, poorly built and poorly supported when you need service or advice. All these factors will cost you money every single day that you own that machine.
One thing I can promise you is that all pad printers are NOT the same. The innovative and well executed design features of TOSH machinery make them a superior choice for your business, and will deliver measurable value for your investment dollar. The versatility of the TOSH designs makes many impossible print jobs possible, marginal print jobs profitable, and easy jobs serious profit makers through real gains in print speed.
If you have researched several brands of pad printers you will have discovered that TOSH machines are not only competitive, but superior in both price and performance compared with other European brands. You will also know that TOSH machines cost more to buy than pad printers from Asia. The price tag is of course an important factor, but should not be the overriding one. I believe when you sit down to make the final decision on your purchase, it is critical that you take into account not just the “bottom line” purchase price, but the real bottom line production cost for your parts. If you are committed to manufacturing in Australia, you know that a zealous commitment to efficiency, speed and precision are your only chance at fending off competition from overseas manufacturers and print suppliers. You have to pay your workers ten times the rate of any overseas manufacturer and I think the best way to level the playing field by providing them with the best tools for the job. Increase your real output, decrease your set up times and watch your competitive advantage grow.
TOSH equipment can give you the leverage to increase the real productivity of your business because with TOSH pad printing machinery, the advantage is built in.
I you have questions about pad print machinery
Contact us, we’re happy to help!
