Safety Record Success At Fairfax’s Tamworth Press

With the advancement of the digital age, gone are the days where printing presses were required to reside within close proximity to the journalists, who would rush a story down to the print room for inclusion in tomorrow's newspaper.

It now makes good business sense to invest in new technologies and consolidate print centres to service a broader geographical location.

Fairfax's original printing press in Tamworth, New South Wales was installed back in 1997. The press was constructed from second hand equipment from various sites around Australia and was approximately 25-30 years old.

As a result of restructuring and with the requirement to consolidate a number of regional printing presses, a new greenfield facility was built in Tamworth and existing equipment from regional areas including Wagga, Nowra, and Warrnambool were relocated to the site.

With a strong focus on health and safety at the site, Fairfax conducted a risk assessment with participation from Goss International and Rockwell Automation.

Based on the findings of the risk assessment, an innovative safety solution was commissioned at the site. This culminated in an enviable safety record for the press that is based on the latest technologies in integrated control and safety.

GuardLogix safety controllers met all the safety and control requirements for the press

For fast troubleshooting, the PanelView™ graphic terminals display the status of the guards, showing which guards are open and which ones are closed. “If an adjustment has been made to a part of the press and the guard is left open, we can see from the console exactly which guard was left open. We can then go directly to close that guard so the press can continue to operate as usual,” explained Hedges.

“Another feature of the solution is the ability to integrate additional guarding among the machinery. When we decided to add some doors in front of the reel stands to protect the printers from moving rollers, we were able to loop this additional guarding into the existing program really easily which was very beneficial for us,” he said.

Safe Guarded Record

The press contains six print towers, six reel stands with two folders that create the end newspapers. This print line can either be run as two independent presses (each containing three print towers with a folder) or they can be run as one press.

“To allow for this we introduced zoning into the safety system so that when used as one press, all of the press's safe stops are active but if they are run as two separate presses the safe stop of one press does not control the other. There is also an emergency stop which can stop everything if required,” said Tomazic.

“In addition, we have found the working components offer great reliability and on top of that, we have implemented a monthly check list to make sure all the guards are working correctly and operating correctly. Every month we physically disconnect and open the guards on all our guard switches,” he said.

Since the installation of the press there have been no failures on the guard switches and there have been no injuries or near misses thanks to the high level guarding at the press. This is reflected in the press's safety record, which is the best in the group.

“We're now up to 2,369 days without lost-time injury so we know that our staff will be able to go home at the end of the day in the same way they came to work each and every day,” said Hedges.

The results mentioned above are specific to this customer's use of Rockwell Automation products and services in conjunction with other products. Specific results may vary for other customers.

Allen-Bradley, GuardLogix, PowerFlex, Sipha, and PanelView are trademarks of Rockwell Automation, Inc.