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A little bit of work ahead
May 12, 2008
About 80,000 sq ft of exhibit space in two halls...how's that for a trade-show display? Not something I'd want to be personally responsible for but for technical manager Franz Haaf, it's all in a month's work for Heidelberg Druckmaschinen at drupa 2008.
"We made a start on May 1. [During drupa], visitors and customers will be able to see a complete printshop incorporating prepress, press, postpress and networks. This would normally take six months to set up," Haaf says. But he's confident that four weeks is sufficient. After all, this is his eighth drupa working for the press manufacturer.
Things really started to take shape last Wednesday, with the infrastructure in place on schedule. A Speedmaster XL 162 sheetfed-offset press-a giant weighing in at over 200 tons-arrived first thing in the morning. Obviously, the largest press Heidelberg has ever built could not be transported into Hall 2, which is 25 ft high, in one go. Overnight, a special truck brought the individual components from the Heidelberg production site in Wiesloch/Walldorf to the exhibition center in Dusseldorf where two 80-ton, heavy-duty cranes lifted the 41-ton paper delivery from the loading area. This unit alone is 90 ft long. After the paper delivery came the 23.5-ton coating unit, followed by six 23.5-ton printing units and, finally, the 17-ton paper feeder.
"From 2 p.m. on May 7, we received new components every three hours. According to plan, the Speedmaster XL 162 is to fully assembled in Hall 2 by 6 p.m. on May 8. Teams are working in two shifts to ensure this is the case," Haad explains.
Yes, Heidelberg (and the couple of thousand other drupa exhibitors) have a little bit a work ahead of them, but if everything else goes as well as the past two weeks, it's be quite a show.
Posted by Mark Spaulding on May 12, 2008 | Comments (0)