Offset Printing
Mannheimer Morgen: Heading for the Future with COLORMAN autoprint
Thursday 30. October 2008 - Dr. Haas GmbH took a trendsetting and future-proof decision for the printing of the daily German newspaper Mannheimer Morgen by investing in a highly automated printing system by manroland.
With five daily newspapers and a circulation of 135,000 the Dr. Haas Mediengruppe is trongly positioned in the Rhine-Neckar region. Flagship is the Mannheimer Morgen with 85,000 copies. Critical, emotional, credible and deeply rooted in the region, are the characteristics that describe the Mannheimer Morgen. Approximately 70 editors across five locations in the region along with correspondents around the world work on maintaining this claim. Furthermore the publishing house also produces papers as the Fränkischen Nachrichten (about 30,000 copies), the Hockenheimer Tageszeitung (about 5,000 copies), the Schwetzinger Zeitung (about 14,500 copies), the Bergsträßer Anzeiger (about 19,000 copies). As print job the Mannheimer Morgen print house also produces the Odenwälder Zeitung (about 11,500 copies), the Weinheimer Nachrichten (about 15,000 copies) as well as parts of the German Financial Times (about 36,000 copies).
After the United States awarded the license for a new newspaper in 1946 to Eitel Friedrich Freiherr von Schilling, the paper was published for the first time in the same year. Under the name Der Morgen and with a volume of four pages, it appeared three times per week at the time. In 1997, the Mannheimer Morgen became colored, in line with the requirements of its readers. The first four-color offset printing press, a COLORMAN from manroland, was implemented. Now the company is again investing in a new technology – the manroland COLORMAN autoprint press. The new press series is based on manroland’s One Touch vision. To make this vision a reality, manroland has already begun to apply, expand, and newly develop key automation features of the new autoprint press series.
The COLORMAN for the Mannheimer Morgen consists of four eight-cylinder towers, four reel splicers and two folders. It prints with a maximum band width of 1,400 millimeters and a speed of 45,000 cylinder rotations per hour. Due to user-friendliness, the printing units of the COLORMAN autoprint are positioned lower than the previous units. You can access the printing units via hoists, printing lifts or, more conventional, via stairs. The new construction style does not lengthen the printing press and facilitates its maintenance. Moreover, the COLORMAN autoprint at the Mannheimer Morgen is equipped with APL logistics. In addition to the already proven automatic plate loading with a robot arm (APL), the new manroland system includes a fully automated workflow for the plate changing process. With this system, the plate storage units can be loaded very efficiently within the press as well as outside the press in the central control console. Via a rail transport system, they are moved into the loading position fully automatically. This solution equally focuses on a reduction in change-over time, ergonomics and stress-free working for the printer without exposure to the airborne noise, the structure-borne noise and the aerosols emitted by the printing press.
The press also features a number of manroland Closed Loop systems, which were specifically developed to carry out quality-related adjustments directly and immediately on the press. These include, for instance, the automatic Inline Tension Control web tension control. It keeps the web tension constant in the critical web lead area between the printing unit and the folder superstructure. This reduces variations in the tension behavior within a paper roll, among paper rolls, but also among the individual webs. The cut-off register is optimized, the danger of web break is reduced and the creasing tendency minimized. Additionally, the press is equipped with the automatic CutCon C cut-off register control. The system operates almost entirely without additional marks.
These are just some of the most important technical features of the COLORMAN autoprint at the Mannheimer Morgen. They nevertheless show very clearly that autoprint results in fully automatic handling of the printing press in all key areas of the printing process. This way, these automation modules allow efficient operation coupled with guaranteed high quality – for all requirements of contemporary newspaper printing. Dr. Haas GmbH and manroland have created a new and modern standard for newspaper printing that was unrealizable until now. Only a comprehensive view of the operating processes and innovations derived from this perspective can result in a quantum leap in terms of efficiency and a guaranteed future for newspaper printing. This is precisely what Dr. Haas GmbH has chosen for the production of the Mannheimer Morgen when it invested in the COLORMAN autoprint from manroland.