2. My First day at work

Well as anyone could imagine my first day was one filled with excitement, anticipation and fear. When I arrived for my one day introduction whilst I was in-between exams I entered the print room to be greeted with incredible noise from the printing machinery, as below.

There were ten of these machines chugging along all being monitored by minders, (machine print managers) – each running two.

Now this picture is again a Heidelberg Platen but is approximately one & a half times as big as a Ordinary Platen.

There were also two of these. A rough guide would be approximately A3 print size compared to A4 for the smaller Platen. Sheets per hour for A3 approximately 1500 to 2000 reliably because of the sucker and gripper bar movement. Sheets per hour for A4 approximately 2000 to 3600 reliably.

These machines, were as most printers find out are lacking in feelings and produce up to 4 tonnes of pressure. Respect was and is needed whilst operating them and Health and Safety precautions were enforced to make sure that, if any maintenance around the rear ot the platen, for example, greasing the nipples and oiling the marked oiling points, then the power should be cut on the machine to evade injury. A boss of a firm, several years before saw the press not printing and immediately started the press up and mangled the hand of the operative who was actually his son. During the last few exams I was working and had time off to sit my GCSE’s and then the hard work started. During the first year I struggled at college trying to understand printing processes that 67%, I would not encounter throughout my working life.

Over the following months both at work and at college I gained knowledge about all the printing processes with a conservative view because of no practical experience on anything other than Letterpress and Lithography.