manroland Colorman autoprint Prints Multiple Titles in Germany

Germany's Mannheimer Morgen has begun printing on its $18 million manroland Colorman autoprint, one of the press manufacturer's first automatic plate-loading (APL) installations.

Since Dr. Haas GmbH, publisher of the Mannheimer Morgen and other regional newspapers, chose a Colorman autoprint in satellite design two years ago, "we achieve a clear improvement in four-color printing quality and - thanks to shorter makeready times - save significant time in production," Technical Director Harald Blendowski said in a statement. The site's remaining towers from the previous Colorman series will be replaced by two autoprint printing towers this fall.

With 16 APL robots, four reel splicers and two folders, the Colorman autoprint will print 21 local editions of the Mannheimer Morgen, Fränkischen Nachrichten, Bergsträßer Anzeiger, Schwetzinger Zeitung and Hockenheimer Tageszeitung. In addition to this print run of approximately 185,000 copies, the publisher produces commercial work, such as a partial print run of Financial Times Deutschland.

Satellite design ensures the required quality, applying four colors to the paper at shorter intervals. The press also features a number of manroland Inline Control systems -InlineTension for automatic web tension control and InlineCutoff for automatic cut-off compensator control. Thanks to APL logistics, employees only need to take the elevator to the gallery for limited tasks: maintenance, web fedding and used-plate disposal.

In addition to printing quality and ergonomics, automation affords faster production and makeready. Its web speed of 12.5 meters per second has increased output from 40,000 copies to 45,000. Consuming up to 2,800 printing plates, the APL robots reduce makeready times considerably. Blendowski calculates a one-hour advantage in production for the Fränkische Nachrichten and the Bergsträßer Anzeiger: "We save 15 minutes during the initial makeready period and six minutes during each of the seven version changes," he says.

The spur solution with APL transport automates plate transport from makeready, to carriage loading in the soundproofed control console area, to the APL robots. Each printing couple with a robot is assigned to a rail. The rail network's logistical core consists of control software for loading in the printing unit. Software pre-sorts exposed plates, and the operator checks for correct sequence and loads the boxes manually. Rail-transported carriages carry plates to the robot. This design can work best in tight spaces, as in Mannheim, and requires no APL control (no need for a workflow program to control the process).