Scotprint's Vulcan Blankets
After six months production around the clock, the manroland 710 is still fitted with some of the original ‘first dress’ blankets.
“By December we had purchased six new Vulcan blankets for the B1 710, which has completed over three million impressions, and eight blankets for the 7B 904, which has printed nine million impressions,” says works manager Ian McCall. “That is a fantastic performance.
“The type of work we produce demands the highest print quality and we obtain first class reproduction from the Vulcan blankets. In addition, the Vulcan’s impressive durability means we are not losing productivity because of having to stop the press to change a damaged blanket, something that is much more of an issue with lower quality products.”
Scotprint, part of the Montgomery Litho Group, moved into its current East Lothian premises in 2000 and is one of the UK’s leading specialist sheet-fed printers in the map, atlas and educational book sector. The company’s manroland and KBA presses print some of the best known maps and atlases, with names such as Collins, The Times, Ordnance Survey and the Automobile Association included amongst its customers.
Ian McCall moved to the Haddington site in late 2007 from a sister Montgomery company in Perth and at that time Scotprint used a mixture of blankets from different suppliers.
“We had used Trelleborg Vulcan in Perth and I had a really good experience of the blankets at that site,” he says. “I was keen to make Vulcan the standard at Scotprint and when we installed the new manrolands we changed to the Trelleborg solution for all our presses here at Haddington. Printcom, which represents Trelleborg’s Vulcan range throughout the UK, fits bars to the blankets to suit our presses but they last so well that we don’t place many orders!”