Automated Triplewide Wifag Presses Go to New German Plant

By: E&P Staff From mid 2010, in the new Rhein Main (DRM) printing center in R?sselsheim, Hessen, four highly automated, triplewide Wifag evolution 473 presses will print 330,000 newspaper copies daily, along with weeklies and advertising newspapers with high color content and quality.

The Rhein Main GmbH & Co. KG printing center is a joint venture of the Rhein Main (Mainz) publishing group and the Medienhaus S?dhessen (Darmstadt). Over the next two years, the partners will invest about 100 million euros in a 409,000-square-foot plant. Both groups are among the region's leading newspaper publishers.

Rhein Main publishes, among others, Allgemeine Zeitung (Mainz), Mainspitze (R?sselsheim), Wiesbadener Kurier, Wiesbadener Tagblatt and Wormser Zeitung, with more than 20 regional editions and total daily circulation of about 220,000 copies. Medienhaus S?dhessen mainly publishes the Darmst?dter Echo, R?sselsheimer Echo, Gross Gerauer Echo, Ried Echo, Odenw?lder Echo and Starkenburger Echo, with total daily circulation of 110,000 copies.

The evolution 473s, with an 82.5-inch web width and 20-inch cut-off, will be installed inline and designed for up to 45,000 cylinder revolutions per hour. The presses will be equipped with features that shorten make-ready and increase quality and productivity.

For the roll logistics, the DRM printing center will be equipped with intermediate storage, automatic guided vehicles and eight Wifag autopaster A60 reelstands for rolls of up to 1,500 mm diameter. Each press section will have two nine-cylinder towers in satellite configuration, autoturn turner-bar modules with four levels, and a KF 150 jaw folder with 2:7:7cylinder ratio, equipped with both ribbon and cylinder stitchers.

In addition, printing units will be fitted with automatic plate changers and washing devices for the blankets and impression cylinders. The image-based, closed-loop cut-off register controls, which function without register marks and are operated from the press-control consoles.