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Harland Simon to upgrade Goss Universal controls at La Prensa, Panama

Monday 07. September 2015 - Harland Simon is pleased to announce that La Prensa, Panama, has contracted with them to replace the aging and obsolete press control system on its Goss Universal Press. Increased demand on their press and lack of component availability for the existing Rockwell Automation control systems, have led to La Prensa's decision to replace their control system.

The project is to include the replacement of four control consoles, MPU and on-unit Ink, Damp and Registration controllers at their facility in Panama. The upgrade will replace four Bargraph desks with Harland Simon’s P6000 touch screen consoles, including ink presetting, job selection, imposition creation and density curve set-up. The P6000 Console uses the latest generation of widescreen monitors featuring a higher resolution and greater display area. This means more relevant functionality can be displayed on each screen layout which, in turn, reduces the need to hop from one screen to another. Reduced keyHarlstrokes and fewer displays means that operation is more efficient and waste is reduced. To maintain production, at this stage the Rockwell Damp controller [Z859] and Ink/Registration controller [Z808] remain in use, interfaced via HDLC from the new PC based microprocessor unit (MPU). The second stage of the upgrade will be to replace these two controllers (see image), both utilizing Ethernet communication back to the MPU replacement PC and P6000 control console.
John Staiano, Managing Director – Americas for Harland Simon, commented, “Our local agent in the region, Pablo Aguirre and Harland Simon, have been working closely with the team at La Prensa, and they have undertaken site visits to our customers in North America; We are very excited to deliver a solution for their Universal press, which supports their on-going goals and financial expectations.”

Harland Simon’s upgrade methodology means that throughout the project the existing system will remain operational until the new equipment is fully tested. This removes any risk to production. Costs are minimized by retaining elements of the old system that can still be used and supported. It’s an approach that Harland Simon has used on many occasions on systems supplied by Rockwell Automation, EAE, Goss, Honeywell and manroland.

The above solution has already been rolled out to a number of sites in Europe and Asia; however, more locally at Advance Web Offset, CA; Star Phoenix, SK and more recently at Tribune-Review, PA.