Harland Simon will be presenting its Reelstand Upgrades service for newspaper printers at the NEXPO newspaper technology exhibition and conference to be held in Washington from 19^th June 2004. The service is targeted at the large installed base of printers who suffer from poorly performing reelstands. A reelstand upgrade from Harland Simon has been shown to give significant cost savings and potentially a return on investment (ROI) in less than one year.

Paul Barker, Print Manager for Newsquest Lancashire (a Gannett Company), where Harland Simon recently upgraded the static belt reelstands on the refurbished Goss Metroliner says,

"The Harland Simon upgrade has been part of our quest for excellence. The upgrade has improved our productivity by reducing down time and improving our waste performance. Partnership with Newsquest and Harland Simon resulted in no loss of production during installation due to the excellent scheduling of the Engineering work around our print schedule."

Waste can be reduced by up to 200 copies on each and every splice by accurate tension control. For a typical newspaper printer doing 250 splices per week and saving 200 copies per splice this gives a potential saving of over $240,000 per year.

Typically splice success rates can be increased to over 99% so increasing efficiency of the press operation. With better reelstand control, the amount of paper required to be left on the expired reel to provide a consistent paste can be reduced substantially.

The upgrade approach will depend on the age and type of the reelstand but may involve:

• Replacement of existing electronics and sequencing equipment in the paster panels with standard PLC equipment
• Replacement of complex pneumatic tension control system with standard PLC equipment
• Replacement of existing limit and proximity switches
• Fine tuning to minimise waste and maximize runnability
• Integration to existing press controls

Less downtime due to reliable, modern electronics will give reduced maintenance costs. The upgrade eliminates the need for time-consuming setting up of components such as needle valves when all settings are now stored digitally. As a result of the upgrade there is much-improved monitoring, diagnostics and logging available from the system.

Also at the show Harland Simon will be showing soft proofing linked in to its widely acclaimed PRIMA 6000 control console. Shown on a flat screen monitor adjacent to the operator interface terminal, the operator is shown a soft proof of the page which he is making quality adjustments for, thereby eliminating the need for costly hardcopy proofs. The soft proof image is automatically updated as the next page is selected at the console.

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For more information, please contact sales@harlandsimon.com