June
 2004

The installation of bustle wheels on the New York Post’s Goss International Corp. presses has reduced web fan-out, improved registration and helped the daily notch a clear boost in print quality, according to Kris Socia, director of production.

The newspaper (daily, 678,012; Sunday, 467,005) installed the wheels, co-developed by Englewood, Fla.-based UMI, on each of its 16 Goss Newsliner towers in April, Socia said.

Each tower sports three of the wheel-heads, one installed in the center and one each on the towers’ outer edges.

Since the wheels were installed, the Post’s print quality has climbed by 5 percent, Socia said, with 97 percent of its pages now produced in registration and defect-free.

“We saw significant improvement,” Socia said. “Our numbers are good,” he said, adding that the wheels are performing well even at peak production speeds of 65,000 copies per hour.

Socia said he’s been aware of bustle wheels and their advantages in commercial printing, but was skittish about their performance in high-speed newspaper printing. In addition, Socia wanted a wheel that could be controlled automatically from the quiet room, eliminating the need for manual intervention.

UMI had been working to develop exactly that type of bustle wheel for the past 18 months, in concert with Support Products, an Effingham, Ill.-based firm, said UMI President Bob MacKenzie.

UMI’s wheel, three inches in diameter and approximately 3/8-inch thick, causes the web to maintain its proper size by forcing it to dimple, or tighten slightly, as it comes in contact with the device. That effect, known as the bustle effect, helps compensate for any fan-out or growth the web experiences as it travels through the press.

To give the wheels additional shaping power and to ensure against set-off, nozzles were added, enabling the devices to shoot a cushion of air between the wheel and the web.

UMI also beefed up the wheels with automated controls and added tools to manage sidelay adjustment.

“These have been used in commercial printing for  years,” MacKenzie said. “There was no reason not to use them for newspaper printing.”

MacKenzie said the wheels can be added to all offset presses, both single- and double-wide, and can be installed in less than one week. Costs depend upon the type of press and how many are required, but usually range around $900 for a single-wide press and approximately $8,000 for a double-wide configuration.

Color demands

Socia said advertiser and reader demands for more precise color and printing quality force newspapers to improve their production capabilities.

“We run a lot of color,” Socia said. “When you examine variables of the press, ink and conditions, there are still some variances you can’t control.

“The press operators are very quality-conscious, but with the volume of color we print, they needed this additional tool to consistently print the quality product that our readers and advertisers demand.”

The UMI wheels’ automation was an important selling point, Socia said. The devices are controlled by operators in the Post’s quiet room and do not require any additional intervention, he said. MacKenzie said UMI wants to bolster the wheels’ performance even further by integrating them to newspapers’ existing color registration systems, thus providing even more control.