Behold the shaftless printing press, the Ferrari of the newspaper industry. At the ends of its cylinders sit precision electronic motors so accurate from their first rotation that press waste is nearly eradicated. And out-of-register process color? Blame it on pre-press, not the pressroom.

Now consider, with appropriate sympathy, the 1970s offset web press, a hulking, rugged, high-mileage—but still serviceable—Ford Econoline van. Its sloppy electric motors turn gears that turn other gears that finally turn the impression cylinder, but not without sacrificing accuracy, which means pressroom adjustments, which in turn means waste. Not good.

But what if we could mount the rear axle of a Ferrari on the Econoline? Heck, we'll even throw in the wheels. Such an economical move would please the bosses, and maybe get us a mention in Hot Rod Magazine.

That's pretty much what they've done at The State Journal-Register in Springfield, Ill. Led by Pressroom Foreman Al Meier, crews decoupled one unit of a 1979 Goss Metro offset press and bolted on a shaftless unit made by Rexroth Indramat, a German outfit that, uh, makes things without shafts. (And not just printing presses, either—judging from their World Wide Web site, anything that used to have a shaft, Indramat can make shaftless. But we digress.)

Oh, there were doubters in the crowd, one of them being Meier himself.

"I'll admit, I was skeptical," he says, "but it's worked out really well."

The Journal-Register was testing the shaftless retrofit on behalf of a sister Copley paper, The Daily Breeze in Torrance, Calif., which needed to increase color capacity.

And test it they did: The shaftless tower typically puts down the yellow of a four-color process job. From there, the web goes to the 20-year-old Metro units, where cyan, magenta and black are added.

And the whole thing stays in register! If this were one of those late-night Ronco infomercials, the announcer would be yelling, "Isn't that amazing?" and the audience would be cheering wildly.

But wait, there's more!

"We're hooked directly to the mailroom's Ferag inserter," says Meier, "so we have to slow down when they slow down and speed up when they can."

Speeds vary from about 20,000-to-65,000 copies per hour. Amazingly, says Meier, the Indramat-Goss combination stays in register as the speed varies. You'd expect that of a completely shaftless press line, but Meier was surprised to see it coming from this bolted-on experiment. "We were concerned that it wouldn't keep up the way it did, but it stayed in perfect sync," he adds.

However, all good things must end. Meier says eventually the Journal-Register will either have to buy the shaftless unit from Indramat or recouple the Goss unit and let Indramat haul the new toy away. "If we buy additional units," Meier says, "I'm sure they'll be shaftless." And he's sure the Daily Breeze will put them in as well. In the meantime, when its old unit is hooked back up, the State Journal-Register will again get the shaft.

(Oh, come on, you knew it was coming!)

John Bryan leads the news systems and pagination support team at the Los Angeles Times. E-mail, john.bryan@latimes.com; phone, (213) 237-4711.

Volume 9 of the ROP Newspaper Color Ink Book expands the usefulness of the color-ink books historically offered by NAA.

The new volume increases the total number of colors offered to 50, while maintaining the current suite of base color inks. As demand for four-color advertising continues to increase, a page showing both quartertone and midtone gray patches has been added to promote the use of gray bars in all color work. And the book is more compact than ever, making it easy to use in different settings.

Base colors include five spot colors from Volume 8 (orange, medium red, red, cerise and reflex blue), and the process colors (cyan, magenta and yellow). Black is a component of four colors in the new book. Each color is shown with and without black-tint overprints.

Thirteen non-Volume 8 colors have been added. Information on the back of each color page includes the process-color screen percentages (if applicable), the proper wet-ink densities, and ink formulations if printing the color as a spot.

To be issued shortly, thoroughly updated Specifications for Newsprint Advertising Production will help improve reproduction quality in nonheatset printing. Among the SNAP features is a recommended gray balance for ensuring process colors are properly adjusted.

The new color book depicts these neutral three-color grays with their 25 percent and 50 percent black-tint equivalents. The colors and the accompanying information should encourage advertisers to include gray bars or patches on their advertisement pages, and allow printers to compare their own gray bars to those in the book.

The new volume will have a familiar feel for advertisers used to handling fan books. The streamlined 2-inch-by-9.5-inch stick book will be easy to hold and carry.

Two new features are designed to aid both advertisers and printers. A "chip" page for each color has been added, allowing chips to be cut from the book and sent with artwork to specify exactly what color is expected on the final product.

The new volume also includes representations of flexographic and letterpress printing of all process-color combinations included in the color book. Along with the offset-printed process-color combinations included in the book, the representations will show the industry the true range of color possibilities available in newspaper publishing.

The new book will be available this fall. Accompanying materials include broadsheet tint charts showing all color-book process colors in numerical and color-gamut order, diskettes with the NAA color table to be used in pre-press applications, and cross-references to previous NAA Color Ink Books.

Ruth Bohner is NAA director of production materials. E-mail, bohnr@naa.org; phone, (703) 902-1853; fax, (703) 902-1857.

A quarter-century in the making, a mill that could help reduce the newspaper industry's dependence on wood fiber has itself taken root.

In mid-June, ground was broken on a 110,000-ton-per-year kenaf newsprint mill outside of McAllen, Texas. The $150 million mill could be up and running by the end of the fourth quarter next year, Donald N. Soldwedel, chairman of the board of Western Newspapers Inc. of Yuma, Ariz., told the World Association of Newspapers at a summer meeting. The new mill's developer, Kenaf Industries of South Texas, also has developed proprietary procedures to separate kenaf's outer fibers from its core, enabling the leafy, fast-growing plant's use in other applications, including car parts and oil-spill cleanup.

It was 24 years ago that Soldwedel, then chairman of ANPA's newsprint committee, identified kenaf as a potential alternative to wood fiber. Backers touted the cellulose-rich plant's superior strength, ink absorption and shelf life, with reduced yellowing.

Following some three years of research, on Dec. 2, 1979, Western Newspapers' The Yuma Daily Sun became the first newspaper to print an entire press run using newsprint made from kenaf.

A second series of tests in the 1980s also proved successful, but the fiber remained no more than a curiosity.

"We had succeeded in our goal, yet failed because the newsprint industry did nothing," Soldwedel told WAN in June.

Fast forward to 1995, when newsprint prices skyrocketed and industry interest again returned to alternative-fiber sources.

Kenaf Industries quickly secured commitments from more than 10 newspaper groups in the southwestern United States to purchase $1 billion of kenaf newsprint over two decades, but financing and planning lagged the demand.

The company then became a subsidiary of Kafus Industries Ltd. of Vancouver, B.C. An increase in the capacity of the proposed mill caused further delays in planning and securing investors, but in June, construction began.

"The moral of the story," Soldwedel told WAN, "is to not give up."

TechNews Volume 5, Number 5: September/October 1999

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