Pressline Craftsmen Complete Rebuild and Web Conversion for The Morning Call

ALLENTOWN - The Pressline Services team recently completed a major rebuild and upgrade for The Morning Call pressroom. In addition, Pressline also completed a 46” web conversion that has resulted in immediate savings with the reduced use of newsprint.

The Morning Call serves all the residents of Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley. Founded in 1883 as The Critic, the newspaper was renamed in 1895. In 1984 the paper was acquired by the Times Mirror Company, joining the Los Angeles Times, Newsday, The Baltimore Sun, The Hartford Courant and Southern Connecticut Newspapers, Inc. In 2000, Times Mirror was acquired by the Tribune Company, merging 11 newspapers, 22 television stations, four radio stations, a cable TV company and Tribune Interactive.

The scope of the rebuilding project consisted of reconditioning the plate, blanket and CIC cylinders in the two 9-unit presses consisting of 46 printing couples. Pressline’s responsibilities also included rebuilding the vertical drive, horizontal drives, horizontal line clutches, replating copper drums, replacing ink train gears, rebuilding ink train vibrator drives and rebuilding the circ and sidelay adjustment assemblies.

Along with this rebuild project, The Morning Call also asked Pressline Services in conjunction with Rockwell Automation to upgrade the press control systems; replacing the press consoles with new and installing an additional quality desk. These new controls allow the press operators to control ink and water from the quiet room. The additional quality desk can be used on either or both presses. These new controls also come with impositioning software which lets the operators build jobs and impose them on either or both presses that pull in all the preset data from the Rip and presets the ink and water for all the units to be used on the press. Along with the console upgrades, individual unit touch screens were placed on each unit allowing the operators to have local controls for both ink and water as well. In addition to the control upgrades, Presslline upgraded the Technotrans dampening system and installed new CGI ink rails.

For over a decade, Pressline Services, Inc. has allowed newspaper professionals to realize substantial savings through decreased downtime, improved print quality and web reduction. With offices in St. Louis, MO, Mansfield, TX and Joliet, IL, Pressline continues to exceed customers’ expectations.