River Falls, WI – NELA is proud to be the plate automation partner for Transcontinental and their Globe and Mail project. NELA will supply vision punch/bending, plate handling and plate sortation automation for all three print locations, Vancouver, Calgary and Toronto. The systems will be fully integrated into the prepress work flow and KBA Commander CT press. Each system will automatically process plates for the newspaper and commercial plate production.

The Toronto location will receive two NELA – Two Stage Vision/Trim/PunchBenders. These optical punchbenders will first vision shear the plates and then punch and bend according to press specifications. The plates will then be stacked according to production schedule in either one of the eight plate stackers or in one of the 16 removable plate carts. The plate carts can then be detached from the system and rolled to press for easy unloading of plates.

The printing location in Calgary will receive two NELA – Single Stage Vision/Trim/PunchBenders and a plate conveying system to connect the two large format CTPs with the two benders for a fully automatic plate handling system. The system also includes two inline plate shears, eight plate stackers and 14 removable plate carts of various sizes.

In Vancouver, the plates for the KBA Commander CT will be punched and bent by two NELA – Single Stage Vision/Trim/PunchBenders. The plate conveying lines that connect the CTP & processors with the two NELA Benders are controlled by barcode and the NELA Page Tracking Software. The sheared, punched and bent plates are stacked in one of the eight plate stackers or in one of the 14 removable plate carts.

All three systems are fully automatic and use 2D-barcode for plate sortation and plate tracking. Plates are sorted according to customer specifications.

Transcontinental's press application requires a very precise accuracy on the bent printing plate. The NELA Vision System meets this high degree of precision and consistency due to the optical registration of the plate. Conventional "three point" register benders are not able to meet these rigid dimensional requirements on a consistent basis due to plate irregularities.

"We are very proud to be the vendor of choice for Transcontinental for this press project", says Jürgen Gruber, Director of Sales for NELA. "It showcases our capabilities that go beyond just punching and bending plates. This project is a state-of-the-art plate handling and automation system similar to those that we have installed in many major printing facilities around the world".

Installation is planned to start in April 2010.