Fountain Solution Methods

Good day,
I'm interested in how Sheetfed printers are mixing and delivering water to their 4 to 8 color presses. How many are 'completely manual' (hand mix and hand fill circulators), to 'completely automated' (mixers with pumps to maintain level in the circulators).
Enhanced Offset Systems has been servicing the Offset Web market for over 20 years with just a few 'Sheetfed Press' installations. We don't know WHY sheetfed shops do not use our equipment. Can you tell us?
If interested, take a look at: www.enhancedoffset.com
We have had some sheetfed presses from 14 x 20 to 28 x 40 running our systems for over 16 years with great success. We are also looking for a 'test site' near St. Louis, MO to 'show off' our equipment. Can we help each other?
Thank you
lowerhydro

 

lowerhydro
The men in suits, they call the shots. The six, the older five, and the eight colour all came with a doser system from technotrans and works well, as long as people don't mess with it ! In one shop, it was fooled around with so much it was broken and the "suits" wouldn't fix it and there it's mixed by hand, when issues araise it's very clear that the fountain ecth was not mixed properly. I'm know the the web side goes through more of everything, on an average I would say that the 5&6 colour only use 7-10 gallons per shift and it only takes a couple of minutes to mix if you had to do it by hand and the feeders have plenty of time to do that in a shift. Where on a web the amount used is greater due to a greater production and more print units. As a operator I prefer dosers over hand, too bad I'm in Canada.
FSA

 

As mentioned dosing takes very little time by hand for multi-colour sheetfed presses.

Although in my opinion your unit is far to big comparing with one we used to use.

Sounds along the lines of washup tray liners, by not being a necessity

 

One shop using EOS equipment has a 6c + Coater 40", a 6c + Coater 28", and a 2c 28". All presses run the same fountain solution at the same rates. In the beginning, they would mix a one week's supply of solution on Monday morning in a 55 gallon tank. This would feed all the circulators on all presses automatically. When a quality problem occurred, they could 'rule out' a water problem if the problem was only on one press.
Later, after seeing the benefits of the EOS equipment, they installed 2 MixRite units (wall mounted to reduce space requirements) in order to use their 2 part fountain solution. They have been running 'full automatic' for over 10 years now and would never think about going back to 'hand mixing'. They still call a couple of times a year to let us know that 'all is well' and running great. Less than $100 per year in replacement parts keeps their water system running. As we all know, if a press is not running it's not making any profits.
Consistent quality water reduces paper waste, press down time, and allows personnel to concentrate of quality, production, and maintenance.