LANCASHIR PRINTING MACHINE.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1404, 26 January 1899, Page 28

LANCASHIR PRINTING MACHINE.

HOW THE " TIMES ” 13 PRINTED. To print the eight-page “ Times” the company has imported a Lancashire newspaper machine, made by Messrs T. Coulthard and Co., of Preston. This machine is the first of its kind in New Zealand. It

prints from linotype formes, imposed on Hat beds, on paper drawn from a web. It obviates the necessity for stereotyping hand-feeding, and hand-folding. By meant of it the " Times ” in its present form car be printed and folded at the rate of 600 C copies per hour. To house the machine there Las been specially erected the lofh and extremely well-lighted room alread. referred to, and which has a floor space 28 feet by 20 feet in area. The press oc cupies a space of about 22 feet by 6 feet. In the ' Lancashire ” newspaper machine the type-formes are imposed on two beds with on ink-table between them. The web or reel of paper, which has previously

been damped, is mounted in the middle of the machine above the type-beds. From the reel the paper is taken over a carrierroller, then under a tension-roller. The latter rises and falls with the varying tension of the paper, and automatically prevents the slack paper from passing into the machine. By this means the risk of breakage of payer is reduced to a minimum, and at the same time the register or “hacking” of the pages is maintained with sufficient exactitude. From the ten-sion-roller the paper passes over another carrier-roller and down to an impression cylinder, the first of a series of four, with earner-rollers above them, where four itnpressions are received on one side of the

paper. After leaving the fourth impression cylinder of this series the paper is carried up over a carrier-roller, back above ' the reel, over another carrier roller, and down to a second series of impression cylinders, where it receives four impressions from the type-formes at the folder end of the machine. Next the paper passes through cutting cylinders, which cut off half-sheets. Two halves pass up to the collecting race, where they are gathered together ready for the first fold. The folding apparatus finishes its work depositing on a table copies of the Times ready for distribution. Automatically the number of copies completed by the machine is recorded. As to the mechanism of the press, it may be explained that the typebeds carriage is driven by a mangle-rack mounted immediately beneath the beds. The rack is actuated by a pinion fixed on the top of a vertical shaft in the centre of the machine. This vertical shaft is driven from the main driving shaft by mitre wheels. On the main driving shaft is a pinion, driving two trains of wheels, which convey motion to the impression cylinders and also to the inking and folding arrangements. The patent impression cylinders

fiermit the paper to be driven at exactly he same speed as the surface of the type. Air buffers at each end of the machine cause the reversing of the type-beds carriage to be effected smoothly and with as little noise as possible. Lancashire machines are in use in various offices in Great Britain and South Africa. In the Old Country they are working at Birmingham, Carlisle, Chatham, Grimsby, Darlington, Kenctai ;-ncl Oban. At Capetown there are four of these machines, and in the Transvaal two. The '‘Times” machine was erected by their machinist, Mr T. R. Cooke, late of Dunedin, assisted by Mr Manthel, engineer, of Wellington. Mr Thomas Blesdal ■, engineer to Messrs Coultliard and Co., who is at present on a holiday visit to New Zealand, has given the benefit of his experience with the first " runs ” of the press.