Baldwin cleaning technology – a success factor for NZZ Print, Switzerland12.03.2012

NZZ Print, the print shop of Neue Zürcher Zeitung, needed to upgrade its blanket cleaning system on its 2004 Wifag evolution 471 newspaper web press to shorten make-ready times, reduce waste, increase press capacity and improve the overall commercial and environmental efficiency of the production process. NZZ Print made the decision to transition to ImpactFusion-F NP, Baldwin’s latest cloth blanket cleaning system, replacing another manufacturer’s brush system on the press.

The installation of Baldwin’s solution at the printing center in Schlieren, just outside Zurich, Switzerland, was completed at the end of January 2011.

Baldwin equipped the ten tower press line (each tower consists of two 10-cylinder satellite units) with a total of eighty ImpactFusion-F NP cleaning units and ten impression cylinder cleaning units. The press has a web width of 1280 mm and a cylinder circumference of 940 mm and was already equipped with a Baldwin spray dampening system.

Innovative advantages create an easy decision
Anton Nussbaumer, NZZ’s Technical Director, said, “The investment in a new blanket cleaning system became necessary because the existing equipment was getting more and more unreliable. It demanded a huge amount of maintenance, and the quality of the cleaning results was no longer acceptable. Our staff regularly had to clean the press manually because the system was forever breaking down.” Nussbaumer continues, “That’s why we set out again to find a workable solution that would see us through to the end of the press’ life in 2018 or 2020. When we won the contract to print the high-volume, nationwide Coop newspaper, we knew it was time to act.”

So what actually tipped the scales in favor of Baldwin’s ImpactFusion-F NP system? Balthasar Christen, Printing Manager at NZZ Print, mentions the fact that Baldwin technology is well established in the market with many convincing testimonials from other newspaper printers. These cases were studied in depth up-front. Christen also considers it an advantage that the ImpactFusion-F NP cleaning units have only a few moving parts and no motors.

“In the end, it was a simple decision for NZZ Print,”Nussbaumer states. “The ImpactFusion-F NP offers the fundamental advantage that the dirt is bound in the cloth and extracted from the press together with the fluid. What’s more, fresh cloth is used for every washup, and the difference this makes to the cleaning quality is startling. It really is worlds apart from the old system, and we have seen a visible improvement in print quality since switching to the new Baldwin system.”

Nussbaumer further noted, “We are using dry cloth to clean the blankets, and Baldwin Prepac is our preferred method used for cleaning the impression cylinders. These Prepac cloths are pretreated with a powerful, environmentally compatible washing agent that is VOC-free. They help reduce wash solution usage to a minimum.”

Excellent ROI
Anton Nussbaumer and his colleagues have calculated that material waste has been reduced by more than 0.5% as a result of migrating to the new Baldwin blanket cleaning system. This may not appear overly dramatic at first glance, yet it equates to a cost saving of more than 80,000 euros a year. “And if we also take account of the lower operating costs so far compared to the old system,”Nussbaumer continues, “our new Baldwin cleaning system will have paid off after 4 years at the latest. In addition, the operators are very grateful that we have finally put an end to manual washups.”

In Nussbaumer’s opinion, both cloth and brush cleaning technology are excellently suited for coldset web offset, with each of the two principles having its own pros and cons. He is well acquainted with both types of solutions that Baldwin offers. In his second function as Head of Neue Luzerner Zeitung’s printing center in Adligenswil, Nussbaumer was responsible for the renewal of the blanket cleaning process there in mid-2009. At that time, the latest Baldwin ProTech 2 NP brush cleaning system successfully replaced a dated brush system on a 1998 Wifag OF 370 press.