.....How does the new press work?

 

THE Vision Group printing press will revolutionise Uganda’s printing industry by improving the delivery times for products and clients’ print jobs onto the market. The press which cost $9m, is housed in a two-storey $5m structure.

According to industry experts, the press — a Goss type — is designed by renowned Goss International, US. The main parts were made in the UK and the steel component designed and fabricated in China. The machine was supplied by Spicers East Africa Ltd, also contracted to install it with a team of expert engineers.

The Goss press is a step forward for Vision Group in consolidating investments in the multimedia business with television, radio, newspaper, magazine and the Internet.
David Ssemugga, the Group’s chief engineer, says the difference between the old printing press and newly installed Goss press lies in automation.

The production planner, Sam Kyagulanyi, says the old press used to print 24 pages with 16 of them in full colour, at a speed of 21,000 copies per hour. However, the new press prints 64 pages of full colour and churns out 45,000 copies every hour.

In addition, the new machine for cold-set printing runs non-stop. The machine has a newsprint paper bank to ensure that there is reserve paper when a roll is exhausted. This is to ensure that the press does not stop. The press holds a total of eight stands of queued newsprint paper.

“With the old press, we would manually load the paper rolls,” Ssemugga says.
After the loading, the newsprint paper is guided to a unit on an upper deck, where the actual digitised printing commences. On the upper deck are the colour ink tanks.

“Formerly, we would use a spoon to pour ink into columns. But now the tanks pump the ink into the different columns,” says Ssemugga.

The colours are monitored on cameras which make a register of the colour process for a better print product, says Ssemugga. This reduces the damage levels, and ensures proper colour registration.

The press comprises eight towers, each fixed with eight fountains which deliver the ink onto the rolling newsprint. After printing, another system of the press gathers the newspapers off the press for automated insertion, cutting, folding and stitching. There is also the optional function of stapling at the spine of the newspaper.

The press has a fully-digitised control room which is specially designed to ensure the safety and health of the staff.

“When the printing press is running, work shifts to the control room where it is less noisy. It is here that water, ink and colour registration is monitored,” Ssemugga says.

TAnother important section of the printing press is the mail room, the only unit in East and Central Africa with the capacity to seal, pack and label print works without any human intervention.

This section is expected to ease work for insertion, binding and sealing of newspapers, and labelling for delivery routes for dispatch.

Depending on the preset commands, the printed newspapers undergo automated counting, wrapping and labelling according to the delivery routes and receiver. Another machine called the Alpha-Liner does the insertion.

With the new press, there will also be increased efficiency. With the old press, there were three working shifts. Now, there are two shifts — 9:30am up to 5:00pm and 4:30pm to midnight, according to Ssemugga.

Kyagulanyi says: “Our schedules have changed. If a client in Sudan sends us a softcopy of print work at 6:00pm, we can make the pre-press plates, print and deliver the product within three hours.”

Before, this was impossible, but with the new press, “we can now accept late jobs,” Ssemugga says.