Lengthy negotiations in the USA have ended with QI Press Controls announcing an order to supply their mRC closed loop colour register system for North America’s first Goss FPS press, installed at the ‘Free Lance-Star’ in Fredericksburg, Virginia.
A heatset upgrade to the press was announced last year, but Gerry Ferron, managing director of QI Press Controls North America, says it took “quite some time” to land the colour rego order. The press is a milestone for both Goss and QI, who have worked together on other FPS installations including that at FD Hoekstra Boom in Holland.
The showpiece Fredericksburg is the first Goss Flexible Printing System installation in the USA, and Ferron says the company is therefore “very proud” to announce being awarded the order. QI will equip four towers with mRC cameras for closed loop colour register control and in addition, 18 mRC cameras will be installed on the two folders to automatically control cut-off register.
The triple-wide FPS press at ‘Free Lance-Star’ has four towers with an 1830 mm maximum web width, enabling it to print 48-page full-colour broadsheet products running straight, and 96-page broadsheet products running collect. In addition it can produce semicommercial products with ribbon widths up to 915 mm at up to 90,000 copies per hour.
“In order to fully automatically control both colour and cut-off register on this extensive FPS press, we will install our mRC solution,” says Ferron. “We are very proud to be able to say we are the first supplier of such control systems on a Goss FPS press in the US market.
“It took quite some time and a joint effort, involving both our US agent Print2Finish, along with our headquarters in the Netherlands to bring this deal about.”
He says visits to several reference sites gave “the required assurance and confirmation” of the capability of the intelligent solutions. “By demonstrating the results achievable, we could convince them that mRC is the way of the future,” he says.
Following ‘Atlanta Journal Constitution’ and Transcontinental, the ‘Free Lance-Star’ will be QI’s third mRC site in the US. Installation of the press starts this northern summer and is expected to be operational early in 2010.
Expansion at two FPS sites
