Plant Tour
Press Department
Hi and welcome to your tour of Friesens Pressroom. We hope that by the end of the tour you will have a good impression of us (pressroom humour!!!)
At Friesens we operate two different makes of presses – Heidelberg and Man Roland presses - both are manufactured in Germany. The presses range in size from a 2-colour 40 inch, to 4-colour 50 inch presses. All of the presses in the Book Division at Friesens are sheetfed, offset presses.
Sheetfed simply means that the paper entering the press has been cut to a specific size as opposed to a roll-fed press where the paper enters from a large uncut roll. The term offset indicates that ink is transferred to a rubber blanket before it is printed on the sheet.
Each press has a crew of two people, an operator and a feeder. The crews work three different shifts – 6:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m., 2:00 p.m. to 12 a.m. and 12 a.m. to 6 a.m.
When you enter the Heidelberg pressroom, you will see one of the largest installations of presses in Canada. In total, there are four presses located here, one 8 colour perfector, one 40 inch 6 colour press with in-line aqueous coating, two 40 inch 2-colour perfectors.
Let us explain a little more about these presses. A perfecting press is a press that can print on both sides of the sheet in one pass. This type of press is commonly used for jobs that have a lot of text.
The 6 and 8-colour presses are used for jobs that contain colour pictures. The 6-colour press is essentially a process press with two extra ink units added to run special colours or varnishes. There is also a coating unit on this press that can apply an aqueous (water) based coating on the sheet for an environmentally friendly finish that adds gloss and durability. The 6-colour press is primarily used to print covers and dustjackets.
Despite this impressive technology, it is really the skilled operators that make a job turn out right. Our dedicated team of Heidelberg operators are pictured.
As you leave the Heidelberg press room, you will shortly find yourself in the MAN Roland press room. Our pressrooms as you can see are bright and inviting.
Friesens has 4 large format MAN Roland presses. All of these are 50 inch presses, and have many automation features. Below is a picture of our skilled Man Roland press operators.
If you are unfamiliar with the detail behind putting ink on paper, and would like to know more, simply click here on Learning About Printing. If you already know how this amazing process works, continue your tour of the pressroom by moving to the next page.
The large format presses can gobble up a lot of paper . . . up to 5 tons a day. That is 120,000 sheets a day or just under 2,000,000 pages printed per day per press. Capable of operating at speeds of up to 12,000 sheets an hour these machines keep everyone on their toes. The Heidelberg presses are also capable of these speeds with the only difference being a smaller sheet size.
Because of the inks, chemicals, and paper waste involved in printing a sheet, Friesens has always been concerned about the environment. The inks used are vegetable based rather than petroleum based that contain much higher V.O.C.’s.
Furthermore, our inks come in 180 kg barrels rather than the industry standard 2.25 kg cans. The ink is pumped through ink lines to all presses by an ink pump system pictured below. By using this system we get better quality ink, less waste, and save 80 cans from the landfill for every barrel used.
In addition, the chemicals and rags used to clean the blankets, rollers and cylinders are sent out to be cleaned and re-used, with the chemical recovered in the cleaning process. Isopropyl alcohol is commonly added to the dampening solution for better press operation. Unfortunately it is not an environmentally friendly product. We are proud to say that our MAN Roland presses operate with no alcohol.
The aluminum plates and the wasted paper are also sent out to be recycled. Even left over contaminated ink is sent back to the ink manufacturer to be recycled. So you can see a great deal of effort is being put into making the pressroom as safe to the environment as possible.
Many of our customers have the opportunity to visit our state-of-the-art pressroom to do press checks. If you planning to visit us to do a press check, please review the following Presschecks booklet.Before finishing the tour, we did want to give publishers an opportunity to hear some insights from the pressroom on how book designers can achieve maximum satisfaction on press by changing their design layouts. If this is of interest simply click on Design Tips. Otherwise, please continue our tour.
