Heat and Haste in Stereo-Room

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 2, 24 March 1927, Page 11 (Supplement)

Heat and Haste in Stereo-Room

foundry ot a newspaper office is known as the stereotyping department. Here molten metal in great crucibles is cast into semi-circular plates which imprint the paper as it winds over the cylinders of the rotary press. It may be news to some people that the actual type set up on the linotype machines does not print the newspaper, but is only the basis of the ultimate casting. Processes highly technical are necessary in order that THE SUN may appear dressed in the black, easily-read lettering which distinguishes it. IN THE OLD DAYS Once upon a time, a newspaper was printed cne sheet at a time by pressing paper on to a page of hand-set type in a flat-bed machine. Now there are intervening processes between the type-setting and the printing. When the forme of type has been approved by the subeditor and the head of the composing department. it is run in on a steel trolley to the stereo rooms and placed in the latest Winkler automatic moulding press, a costly piece of mechanism from Switzerland. The forme is covered with a composite sheet called a matrix or dry flong; and the electrically-operated Winkler exerts on the flong heat and an immense pressure of 400 tons, or roughly one ton to the square inch. So sensitive is the operation, however, that the leaden type is not injured. The matrix, roasted and hardened, and carrying the imprint of the type is free from the machine in under three minutes! What a contrast to the primitive method of prepar-

ing a “wet” flong for each day’s issue, by pasting sheets of blotting and tissue paper together and taking the impress by beating by manual labour! The evolution of THE SUN’S apparatus included the steam-pressure press which with its presssure of SO pounds was able to prepare eight plates in six hours, and even the electric mangier, still widely used, though it, at times, causes a spreading of the mould. HOT WORK! Molten metal, heated up to a temperature of 560 degrees Fahrenheit has now to be poured into the flong which is bent into an arc so that the resulting metal plate will fit on the cylinders of the rotary press. Three to four tons of metal are in solution in a great container from which open off two casting-boxes. A flong placed in each box, a turn of a handle and two solid, curved metal plates are released. Not so long ago the molten metal had to be ladled into the box. This caster, made by the famous Arm of Hoe and Co., of London and New York, is water-cooled, and the plates are ready one minute after the flongs are in position. THE CALL OF SPEED The labour of making the plate is not yet finished. It goes straight into a long plate "finisher” and its edges are trimmed and the "overfloat” severed, bevelled top and bottom, and the inside ribs bored to make the plate a uniform thickness. A cooling drum sprays it with water and dries it with compressed air and a high speed “router” perfects it. Down it then goes in the lift to the waiting press.

The call of speed is met by THE SUN’S machines. Two plates are prepared in five and a half minutes, and a sixteen-page paper has gone through the stereo department in 55 minutes, and has been selling on the streets five minutes later. Either two or four plates are made from each forme. Quite recently it was thought impossible to make and finish two plates within fifteen minutes. The increased size of papers and the increasing hustle of existence have made demands and THE SUN has answered with quick efficiency. Othej- interesting machinery is contained in the stereo department. A big circular saw and trimmer, also made by Hoe and Co., is capable of eating through inch-thick metal as if it were cheese. Advertisement blocks and bases are made in the flat casting boxes. Gauges trim the edges to a perfect measure and a Winkler miller is capable of bringing out plates accurately planed to one-tenth of a millimetre. Every machine in the department is the latest and most efficient that the world’s engineering talent has been able to produce. A LABORATORY Probably THE SUN Is one of the only newspapers In the world which carries a fully equipped laboratory for the chemical control of the different type metal alloys. Here in the stereo department, which is in charge of Mr. J. M. Rennie, a University-trained chemist and engineer, is carried out the rapid assaying of the metals, the mixing, and the casting into ingots for the linotype machines; A res.ult of this strict analysis has been that THE SUN has not been troubled with “metalrunning” problems, known to many printing offices.