posted Jul 15, 2011 9:00 AM by PRINT INNOVATORS   [ updated Jul 18, 2011 1:37 PM ]
[By Editor & Publisher Staff]
January 05, 2007

NEW YORK Goss International, Westmont, Ill., and Preston, England, announced today that The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va., will be the first U.S. newspaper to use a Goss Flexible Printing System (FPS) press. Installation is slated to begin in 2008.
    The independently owned paper will run a 72-inch-wide-web through four towers for triple-wide production (six 12-inch broadsheet pages). Goss also will provide press gripper conveyor and winding-unwinding storage components from Ferag (which it represents in the United States) and a dual-delivery, 34-station Goss Magnapak packaging system equipped for polywrapping and inserting. Cycling at up to 30,000 papers per hour, the Magnapak's shaftless design allows automated zoning at full production speed.
    The Free Lance-Star's FPS will include two 2:5:5 jaw folders, five formers, four Contiweb FD pasters, and Omnizone supervisory control. Unique features include independent inker units that slide apart on rails from the plate and blanket cylinder section, simplifying cut-off change possibilities. The tower's compact design also improves print quality while reducing building height requirements. (See E&P Online, Oct. 9, 2005.)
Running in straight mode, the 90,000 copy-per-hour FPS in Fredericksburg will have the capacity to print products consisting of 48 full-color broadsheet pages, and 96-page broadsheet products running collect, as well as semicommercial products with ribbon widths up to 36 inches.
    "We've tracked the FPS press closely, from the drupa 2004 introduction through live print tests in England at the Goss International facility in 2006," Free Lance-Star Operations Director John Jenkins said in a statement. While "the fundamental technologies are well proven," he continued, the new platform offers print quality, efficiency and versatility breakthroughs "that will allow us to better serve our readers, advertisers and contract print partners well into the future."
    Jenkins said the press and packaging components' shaftless design and manufacture at Goss' New Hampshire facility were important in choosing the equipment. "The opportunity to install integrated press and packaging systems from a single vendor also provides compelling advantages," he added.#

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