Milling and mixing are critical processes for ink manufacturing. However, it is also a job that requires care and safety, as injuries can and do occur.
 
With that in mind, the National Association of Printing Ink Manufacturers (NAPIM) recently launched a new 13-minute three-roll mill safety training DVD. The video provides a comprehensive overview of safe operating procedures for three-roll mills.
 
George Fuchs, director regulatory affairs and technology for NAPIM, said that the idea for the three-roll mill safety video came from an earlier NAPIM safety video on vertical post mixers.
 
“A few years back, we made a vertical post safety DVD that followed ANSI standards,” Fuchs said. “When those standards were updated, we decided it was an ideal opportunity to make more safety training resources available to the industry.”
 
Mills were the next logical area to concentrate on.
 
“Mills are another tool in the ink manufacturing process, but we constantly need to be aware of safety when we use these machines,” added Brad Bergey, NAPIM’s executive director.
 
“Milling and mixing are important operations in the ink industry,” Fuchs noted. “There have been accidents over the years, and there is always the potential for more injuries.”
 
Among the areas covered by the ANSI Standard B65/NAPIM 177.1 Safe Operation – Printing Ink Three Roll Mills is the issue of dynamic braking, which older mills don’t have as standard equipment.
 
“When operators hit the emergency stop button, the mill or mixer doesn’t always stop right away,” Fuchs noted. “If you want to follow the ANSI standard, eventually you’ll have to retrofit your mills with a dynamic braking system that stops the mill in a quarter revolution.”
 
Fuchs said that Joe Cichon and Kevin Cochran of INX International Ink Company helped produce the video, and NAPIM Health and Safety Committee members Aaron New of Siegwerk, Jerry Napiecek of Colorcon and Chris Barriclow of Flint Group were instrumental in developing the concept and the script.
 
Fuchs said that there has been a tremendous amount of interest already in the video, which came out a month ago.
 
This new three-roll mill video will be part of the NAPIM Safe First program, a soon to be released online safety training program from NAPIM. He added that it is important to emphasize that this DVD is not a company’s entre safety program, but instead to enhance direct, supervised training by an experienced mill operator.
 
“This will be the first step in the enhanced NAPIM effort to provide safety resources for he industry,” Fuchs noted. “We will have a series of online safety training modules for member companies at a minimal cost. These will also be able to be used to maintain safety training records online.”
 
To order the three-roll mill safety video, contact NAPIM at [email protected], or call (770) 209-7289.