IPCO US, LLC. is proud to announce that its ‘steel conveyor belt with High Precision Tracking’ conveying solution received a coveted PRINTING United Alliance 2022 Pinnacle Product Award for Material Handling Equipment. The winning entry can be found online at the Pinnacle Product Awards Gallery.

Open to all PRINTING United Alliance supplier members, the Pinnacle Product Award competition evaluates products that will be available for sale in 2022. A highly qualified panel of judges across the printing industry evaluated the annual contest’s 160+ entries in more than 58 categories spanning analog, digital, output, and non-output technologies.

“It is a great honor to receive such a prestigious award and we are absolutely thrilled with this recognition,” said Cherryleen Garcia-Lindgren, current R&D Manager and outgoing Global Product Manager Digital Printing for IPCO. “This is naturally a group effort from a team of high-performing individuals and functions across the company. But most of all, we see this as a confirmation of IPCO’s innovative product offering to the digital printing industry. We believe that IPCO steel belt together with high precision belt tracking, will enable high precision printing with digital printers.

“One of the things I like best about our competition is that it is juried, and judges are basing their decisions on objective criteria. And with outstanding entries like IPCO’s steel conveyor belt with high precision tracking, they had their work cut out for them,” said Dawn Nye, Program Manager Pinnacle Awards, PRINTING United Alliance.

“The Pinnacle Product Award competition represents the best of the best among commercial hardware, software, consumables, and industrial and screen equipment,” Weiss said. “Congratulations to all the winners.”

Award winners will receive a digital badge that will give information on their product embedded into the meta-date of the badge; for more information about the awards and how to participate in future Pinnacle Awards Programs, visit pinnacleawards.printing.org.

IPCO’s steel belts have been at the heart of conveying and processing operations for more than 100 years and are used across a broad range of industrial processes. For the digital printing industry, the key advantages of this type of belt are high levels of flatness, straightness and stability, enabling high precision digital printing at greater speeds than any other belt type. Another important factor is the inherent cleanability of steel. IPCO’s steel belts for the digital printing industry are perforated to able to keep the vacuum for conveying the substrate, which IPCO started with around 10 years ago.

Applications for steel belt-based digital printing range from large format corrugated packaging to high quality, full colour branded materials – even furniture board, film wrap and ceramic tiles. This stability has been proven in independent tests carried out by contract research company Fraunhofer Institute for Production Technology IPT. Laser-based sensors were used to measure the vibration in steel and plastic belts at speeds from 30-300 m/min. Vibration levels were 3 to 6x lower on the steel belt, depending on speed and tension levels.

In mid-2020, IPCO further enhanced the performance of steel belt technology with the introduction of an innovative High Precision Tracking (HPT) solution. The tracking system is one of the most important components of a steel belt-based conveyor and is used to correct the lateral movement of steel belts under different environmental, loading and running conditions.

Specifically developed to meet the challenges of digital printing, IPCO’s HPT system enables belt tracking accurate to +/- 0.1 mm and is suitable for use on presses with belt speeds up to an impressive 300m/min. This is an all-new system and a significant advance in tracking technology, combining electric actuation cylinders with contact free optical sensors to deliver rapid system reaction times and correct belt positioning.