Consumables

Vulcan Success at Broughton Printers

Thursday 25. November 2010 - The five-tower KBA Commander press at UK newspaper printer Broughton Printers, Preston, has been performing highly effectively for the past twelve months, utilising Vulcan Metal News 10 blankets, according to operations director John Coombs. The 80,000 copies an hour KBA Commander went into full production in December 2007 using blankets from several suppliers.

“On large, fast running newspaper presses metal-backed blankets are the obvious choice but, to be frank, all blanket manufacturers have struggled to perfect this relatively new technology,” says Mr Coombs. “A modern newspaper press places huge technical and performance demands upon the blankets used and as a matter of policy we constantly monitor developments taking place amongst the key players.
“However, there is no doubt that at present Trelleborg has taken the lead in this field, with its ability to provide metal-backed blankets that give excellent robust performance combined with consistent high print quality. The technical support and back up from Trelleborg is also first class, which is vital to any newspaper printer operating 24/7.”
Vulcan Metal News incorporates a film backing, the result of development work by Trelleborg and its Italian distributor Printgraph, whose managing director, Roberto Levi, invented the Finito series of films. Conventional adhesive is attacked by a wide range of commonly used press blanket washing agents.
Regardless of whether blanket washing is carried out by hand or automatically the cleaning agent will, over a period of time, dissolve the adhesive, with the usual result being that the film separates from the blanket’s steel backing. Trelleborg has overcome this issue with Vulcan Metal News.
“We change all eighty Vulcan blankets on the KBA Commander every three months as part of our routine maintenance programme and during that time we will normally have obtained more than twenty million impressions from each blanket,” says John Coombs. “Achieving consistent high quality results throughout the whole of this three month period is impressive, while the durability of the Trelleborg Vulcan blanket means that we replace very few because of smashes.”
Broughton Printers, which is owned by the Northern and Shell group, prints copies of the Daily Express and Sunday Express, Daily Star and Sunday Star and Daily Sports News and Sunday Sports News, plus around 35 local titles each week such as the daily Blackpool Gazette, Wigan Evening Post and Lancashire Evening Post. The newspapers printed at the Lancashire site are delivered as far away as Coventry, Leicester, Newcastle and Scotland.