Rotary printing
Rotary printing is a printing technique that can be used for all three main printing processes ( gravure , letterpress and planographic printing ) and the invention of the rotary printing machine represented an outstanding German contribution to the first phase of the industrial revolution .
Rotary presses come in a variety of designs, from single and double units (1/1, 2/0) to tower units (2/0 to 4/4) and satellite designs (up to 16 printing units on one impression cylinder ).
development
The construction of the rotary machine was not a revolutionary invention, but the result of a long development. In terms of technology history, it was preceded by the platen printing press , the main form of the printing press (around 1440), and the cylinder press (1811). In 1846 the British Augustus Applegath built a rotary press for the Times that could print 12,000 per hour. This machine was improved by the Americans Richard March Hoe , William Bullock and the French Hippolyte Auguste Marinoni . The machine developed at that time was already faster than others. Nonetheless, further changes were necessary, which were mainly made in Great Britain and the USA between 1860 and 1870.
The American William Bullock built the first perfectly functioning rotary machine between 1863 and 1865. They could both recto make and the reverse printing in a printing operation, and had lap stereo plates as a printing form. Bullock was the first to use two forme and impression cylinders . The machine ran fully automatically and managed 10,000 sheets per hour.
The breakthrough came with the then owner of the Times, John Walter III , and two technicians from his printing house. JC MacDonald and J. Calverly built a web press between 1862 and 1866. This was later called " Walterpresse ". From 1869 to 1895, three machines of this type were in constant use for the Times. In 1885 they were supplemented by a cutting and folding unit.
In 1873, the Augsburg - Nuremberg machine factory, later MAN AG , exhibited a web-fed rotary machine based on the Walter press principle at the world exhibition in Vienna. In the same year it was used for printing the Austrian daily newspaper Die Presse (Vienna).
A rotary press was first built by MAN in 1879 for commercial printing, used for the magazine Die Illustrierte Welt , which was published by the Deutsche Verlagsanstalt Stuttgart. In Würzburg , where the foundation stone for the world's first printing machine factory ( Koenig & Bauer ) was laid in 1817, a rotary press was installed by the Richter printing house in 1883.
In 1902, the first rotary press that could print text and images at the same time was used to print the Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung .
In 1912 the first rotary offset press was developed by the Vogtland machine factory (VOMAG) with the support of Caspar Hermann .
In 1939, the Times rotary press produced 40,000 copies of a 32-page newspaper.
Printing process
Rotary printing processes work according to the printing principle round on round, which means that both the printing form and the counter pressure are cylindrical. Both cylinders are constantly moving in opposite directions and only separated from one another by the printing material .
With multi-color printing, the machine is equipped with one printing and one inking unit for each color.
Sheet and web presses
In offset printing and rotogravure printing , rotation printing is only used when printing is carried out on rolls. In letterpress printing , a distinction is made between web-fed rotary printing and sheet- fed rotary printing .
The cylinder and the paper web, which are constantly rotating in one direction, enable a faster work pace to be achieved than in sheet-fed printing machines. This is mainly used when printing long runs.
A sheet-fed rotary press achieves an output of around 7,000 prints per hour. Individual sheets are processed in it. With up to four inking units, multi-color prints are possible in one operation. The printing forms are either curved plastic clichés or winding plates.
Web-fed rotary presses have an output of around 35,000 cylinder revolutions per hour and, due to their speed, are mainly used for printing newspapers. The paper web is printed directly from the roll. Often these machines are built in the tiered construction. The finished paper webs are transferred directly to further processing , i.e. cut, folded and collated immediately after printing . Only the finished product leaves the rotary machine. With each rotation, the cylinders receive new printing ink , which, depending on the printing process, only adheres to the specific surface elements.
The most common rotary printing process is web offset printing .
application
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Rotary printing is used, among other things, for the production of newspapers, books and other printed products in high volumes .
literature
- Fritz Funke: Book customer. 6th edition. KG Saur Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-598-11390-0 .
- Claus W. Gerhardt : History of the printing process. Part II: Printing. Anton Hiersemann Verlag, Stuttgart 1975, ISBN 3-7772-7521-2 .
- Hans Adolf Halbey: Printing for Germanists, literary and historical scholars. Peter Lang, Bern 1994, ISBN 3-906750-89-2 .
- Helmut Hiller, Stephan Füssel: Dictionary of the book. 6th edition. Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2002, ISBN 3-465-03220-9 .
- Bernhard Laufer: Basic knowledge of typesetting, printing, paper. Publishing house today, Düsseldorf 1984, ISBN 3-920514-19-X .
- Sigfrid H. Steinberg: The black art: 500 years of books. 3. Edition. Prestel Verlag, Munich 1988, ISBN 3-7913-0213-2 .
- Walter Wilkes: high-speed letterpress presses and endless rotary presses of the 19th century . Techn. University, Darmstadt, ISBN 3-88607-152-9 ( table of contents ).
- Reinhard Wittmann: History of the German book trade. 2nd Edition. CH Beck Verlag, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-406-42104-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Ulrich Wagner: Koenig & Bauer-Albert. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Volume I-III / 2, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001-2007; III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. Volume 2, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , p. 1323, note 1.
- ^ Sybille Grübel: Timeline of the history of the city from 1814-2006. In: Ulrich Wagner (Hrsg.): History of the city of Würzburg. 4 volumes, Volume I-III / 2, Theiss, Stuttgart 2001-2007; III / 1–2: From the transition to Bavaria to the 21st century. Volume 2, 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1478-9 , pp. 1225-1247; here: p. 1232.