PRINTING PRESS

My hubby had to work late Thursday night, so I drove down to his office to grab dinner with him. He partially bribed me by telling me I could take pictures of the plant in action. Above he is standing in front of giant ink barrels filled and ready to go onto the paper.

This is a half-web press, which is named because the paper is feed of these giant rolls through the machine and creates an incredible paper trail-maze-web as it makes its way to the end of the line. A full web will have a roll that is twice as wide as that one above.

I have no idea what is going on with the paper here, but it looks like it's being threaded and looped for some reason or another.

These are the giant ink plate thing-a-ma-bobers. This is a 6 color press, so each box can have a different color plate where a specific ink color is applied to the paper.

With the ink applied to the paper, it continues to wind it's way through the maze of the machine. Its next stop is a giant heaters (making this a heat-set press and not a cold-set press) to dry the ink.

Have I mentioned the paper is being fed through here at like 8 million miles per hour? It's like a giant treadmill that's racing from one end to the other end- like 100 yards away!

Up it goes to the top of the cutter-thingie!

Down it goes and it's about to get cut down.

Out them come!

They will run the requested number of this form, the print out the dozens of other forms. Then they go to be assembled into a book, covered with a heavier stock cover or in a folder, stitched together or otherwise bound, cut down to size and then packaged for transport.

The inner-nerd engineer in me loves this and reminds me of the Sesame Street field trips to the crayon factory or the peanut butter plant. Plus it was a photography field trip, which I had been bugging me husband to let me do for months.

GOOD NEWS OF THE DAY: You wouldn't believe the incredible demand for printing.