At Fleming Enterprises we service the needs of the printing industry: printing press line installations, repairs and revisions. A typical sixteen-color line (eight perfecting units) and associated equipment can run over 150′ long and require section to section alignment not to exceed .003″ in any plane. About 15 years ago, we rented a ROTALIGN® system for testing purposes to compare our conventional installation techniques side by side with the laser alignment system. Immediately and with minimal familiarization, our installation labor was reduced by 50% (substantial savings, as the crew rate can exceed $300.00/hr plus material handling equipment) from 14 days using the “conventional method” down to 7 days using the ROTALIGN while at the same time dramatically increasing alignment accuracy. In addition to this benefit, we discovered that various anomalies and lineshaft wear could be detected, that we could do uncoupled sectional alignments with great accuracy up to 10 meters point separation and correct for thermal growth. If it’s shafted, ROTALIGN can align it faster, more accurately and with relative ease. Since then, we have successfully align many presses with our own ROTALIGN alignment tool.
As a maintenance services vendor, I recommend LUDECA highly. The knowledge, skills, integrity and customer support LUDECA continually provides us is of the first rank.” —Jeff Fleming, Fleming Enterprises
Filed under:
Articles and Case Studies by Ana Maria Delgado, CRL