Shaftless Presses Evolve From A Curiosity To The New Standard
Single-width, double-width, offset or flexo--whatever the press, press manufacturers and newspaper folks of all stripes say shaftless technology, first embraced by European publishers, is making serious inroads at U.S. papers.
"I have never seen a product go from concept to acceptance so fast," said Chuck Blevins, chief executive officer of the Blevins Harding Group, a Boulder, Colo., consulting firm.
Press manufacturers list many benefits of shaftless printing. With individual motors driving each print couple or group of couples, web tensioning remains constant; registered color and thus salable copies can be obtained more quickly, reducing newsprint waste. Each couple can be stopped or started as needed, facilitating ad zoning or products tailored to groups of readers.
Al Sheng, senior vice president and chief technology officer for Goss Graphic Systems, told attendees at the Global View of Press Technology workshop that shaftless designs also aim to decrease operating costs, as manufacturers move to smaller, more energy-efficient presses.
For example, i-print, a publisher in Seinajoki, Finland, uses a shaftless Goss Newsliner to print Ilkka, a 54,000-circulation daily, and 50 different commercial jobs, from an eight-page tabloid to a 32-page broadsheet. Quantities for each range from 5,000 to hundreds of thousands of copies.
SHAFTLESS AROUND THE WORLD
Barbara L. Gora, director of marketing and communications for Goss in Westmont, Ill., says that European publishers jumped on the shaftless bandwagon early, while U.S. publishers took a wait-and-see stance. Now that they observe the technology working, publishers in the United States show more confidence; those in South America remain somewhat wary. Many printing plants on the latter continent experience frequent power surges that might affect drive synchronization.
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From new presses to upgrades, NEXPO'98 visitors (left) followed the shaftless buzz from booth to booth. TKS (U.S.A.) Inc. (right) drew rapt attention when its new shaftless press ran on the floor. |
Shaftless trailblazer Tulsa (Okla.) World prints on a WIFAG Press Co. press; the day that NEXPO opened, The Dallas Morning News announced the purchase of two presses from the same Swiss manufacturer. Dallas expects the printing technology, which uses an asynchronous motor to drive each print couple individually, to facilitate zoning.
ABB Industrial Systems Inc. of New Berlin, Wis., has sold 738 shaftless printing couples, as well as 879 retrofit couples, around the world, and its controls are used on the WIFAG presses that the Dallas Morning News bought.
The Fayetteville (N.C.) Observer-Times purchased a shaftless KBA Colora press from Koenig & Bauer-Albert AG of Wurzburg, Germany, to improve color quality and gain color-placement flexibility. The paper purchased 48 couples from subsidiary KBA-Motter Corp. of York, Pa.
UPDATING OLD RELIABLES
Publishers may want to take a perfectly serviceable press and upgrade it to take advantage of shaftless' improved color and other new technology.
That is exactly what the Calgary Herald in Alberta, Canada, did. At the Global Press workshop, Trent Anderson, vice president of manufacturing for the paper, said the daily wanted to improve its color capabilities and decided to keep and upgrade two nine-unit, five half-deck Goss Metro presses. Ultimately, Herald executives decided to go with a four-over-one stacked tower to increase color capacity and a shaftless drive that uses one motor per printing unit.
The upgrade has endured some hitches. The shaftless conversion, due to be completed last February, won't be finished for two months. "The delays were not just shaftless issues but also mechanical and manpower issues," Anderson said. Indramat of Hoffman Estates, Ill., and Harland Simon of Oak Brook, Ill., are upgrading the presses.
For those seeking shaftless, the show floor at NEXPO offered lots of choices.
King Press Corp. of Joplin, Mo., introduced the Media King, a single-width press. Geoff Symanek, a regional manager, said the shaftless drive component is, by design, modular, allowing flexibility should a breakdown occur.
Press manufacturers noted that they have conducted shaftless research for some time. MAN Roland executives discussed experiments dating back to the 1970s. MAN exhibited its new Uniset 70, a single-width shaftless press that produces up to 70,000 copies per hour. MAN also offers shaftless versions of its Geoman and Colorman presses.
Tom Shafer, director of production technologies for Thomson Newspapers, says shaftless presses make sense for newspapers of all sizes because users can plug shaftless units into existing press units as needed, allowing a paper to add "all of the color we really need at a price we can really afford." His conclusion: "I can't imagine [anyone] wanting to buy a press now that still has a shaft in it."