Rural Press improves efficiency with Baldwin World Spray Dampening
8/8/2007
Rural Press improves efficiency with Baldwin World Spray Dampening
Rural Press Printing, the Australian newspaper group, has upgraded the six-tower Goss Community SSC press at its Bridge Print site in South Australia with a World spray dampening system from Baldwin Technology. The order follows the excellent results the company has experienced from a World system in use on a six-tower Goss at The Examiner in Launceston, Tasmania. Rural Press, which merged recently with Fairfax Media, is a major Baldwin/Oxy-Dry user and operates Oxy-Dry automatic blanket cleaning equipment on all of the MAN Uniset presses in use at its 14 printing plants across the country.
The World spray dampening system recently installed at Bridge Print incorporates Baldwin’s unique Constant C technology. Developed to further enhance the capabilities of LithoSpray dampening systems, Constant C technology creates a consistent air curtain across the nozzle openings, keeping them free from blockage by ink, dirt or dust and maintaining uniform dampening spray of the plate. The blocking of nozzles can arise with any make of spray dampening system, but Baldwin is the only manufacturer able to eliminate this problem.
Baldwin’s Constant C technology is fitted to all new LithoSpray Maxima dampening systems and can be supplied with or retrofitted to existing Baldwin Optima and World spray bars. Eliminating nozzle clogging and ensuring even fountain solution distribution of the plate helps to achieve consistently high print quality and significantly reduces maintenance of the spray dampening system.
“Baldwin installed the World spray bars at The Examiner six years ago and they have operated reliably ever since,” says group general manager Bob Lockley.
Shane Brooks is print manager at the Launceston Examiner. “Prior to the installation we were averaging more than 7 per cent waste - a cost of over $300,000 per annum,” says Mr Brooks. “With some pre wiring and pipe work, the World system was retrofitted to six Goss Community towers in a week by bringing one tower online each day. Maintenance on the previous cloth system, flushing the recirculation system and replacing cloth rollers, used virtually all our scheduled maintenance time. This has since been reduced to a few hours each month, while waste has averaged 4 per cent, a saving of $140,000 per annum in paper alone.
“The effectiveness of the World system means that the web is clean right from start up. The added benefit of this is that the press’s automatic registration system can now lock on to a cleaner, sharper diamond quickly, which in turn makes colour setting easier. Less maintenance has meant the press is available for extra print runs each week. This has boosted our printing revenue each year substantially. We have no calls from advertisers complaining about catch up through their adverts. The print quality has dramatically increased,” says Shane Brooks.
At the Bridge Print site, Baldwin’s World spray bars were purchased along with four new Goss towers and retrofitted on two existing Goss towers. The South Australian factory is now benefiting from the same success as that experienced at Launceston.
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