Offset Printing
The Forum-Fargo, ND selects Harland Simon for their Press Control Upgrade Needs
Wednesday 24. December 2008 - Harland Simon has continued its success by signing a contract with The Forum to upgrade their press controls at their flagship newspaper in Fargo, North Dakota.
The conversion will be carried out in the first quarter of 2009, with a completion date set for May 2009; without any disruption to The Forums busy (single press) production operation. This will be the first project of its kind for Harland Simon on these older MediaMAN presses. The project includes replacement of their obsolete MAVO ink/damp controls, as well as their main d.c. drives, on-unit Ink PCBs, register controls and ink drives with industry standard, off-the-shelf solutions; all controlled from two PRIMA 6000 Desks. Furthermore, Harland Simons industry leading PRIMA MS and RIPSet will be scheduling, ink presetting, monitoring and reporting on all production activity.
At all times, the existing system will remain operational until the new system is fully tested and commissioned, which eliminates any risk to production. This method also keeps costs down whilst replacing all the vulnerable parts of the system. The solution is based on techniques that have been successfully developed for the replacement of many press and mailroom control systems over the past 10 years.
Harold Schmunk, Forum Communications, Director – Printing Operations commented, said “After a complete evaluation by our Production Management team and pressroom staff we came to the conclusion that the Harland Simon Press Electronic upgrade would be an excellent choice for our Pressroom. Harland Simon has a feature rich, innovative technology that will provide us with operator friendly press controls. Some of the benefits with the Harland Simon upgrade will be Ink savings from better ink control, fast color registration, efficient Press make ready and less newsprint waste at the folder. Information on ink settings and Press setups for individual press runs can be saved and retrieved for use at a later date.”
The decision to convert to Harland Simon was made on the basis of replacing more obsolete hardware, improved technical support and enhanced features such as comprehensive monitoring, reporting and ink presetting with adaptive (learning) algorithms.
John Staiano, Harland Simons Senior Vice President, further commented, “We are delighted with The Forums decision to select Harland Simon. This goes to show our comprehensive range of press control solutions are versatile enough to upgrade not only American based equipment, but Japanese and German too – a truly universal solution.”