Full service: Dismantling, transport and reassembly of a newspaper printing press

Tetris through the eye of the needle: SCHOLPP dismantled a Colora press in Oranienburg for the Lausitzer Rundschau newspaper and brought it back to the Cottbus site for reassembly. The impressive machine weighed in at a total of 200 tons. This was a challenging project with extremely confined spaces, and required the industrial assembly professionals to dig deep into their special lifting technology toolbox.

The Colora press was an old friend. More than ten years ago, SCHOLPP installed the machine for a newspaper company at its Oranienburg site. Now, the company was tasked with dismantling the 200-ton, eight-meter-high press, transporting it to the site in Cottbus and reassembling it there.

Retrofit and dismantling: large crane maneuvers with millimeter precision

Before SCHOLPP could start dismantling, the press was retrofitted by the manufacturer. To increase its efficiency and performance, a team brought the press up to speed with the latest technology. This required them to replace and update the old electronics.

Things were already pretty tight at the dismantling site. The solution for the extremely limited space in the print shop was to use a special large crane with a load capacity of 100 tons that could be telescoped under load. This special crane was necessary because the large press components, including the lifting beam, weighed 34 tons.

The lift paths were sometimes so narrow that there were only a few millimeters between the machine components and the building. So a very delicate touch was required when dismantling and removing the machine parts. Five weeks later, eleven trucks finally made the more than 160 kilometer journey between the two Brandenburg cities.

Heavy frost requires improvisation

Meanwhile, in Cottbus, preparations were underway for the move-in and reassembly of the Colora press. In the course of planning, one thing quickly became clear: lack of space meant it would be impossible to bring the large components in through the regular hall door or the sides of the building. The IE Graphic Engineering project engineers had to work with SCHOLPP to plan and design another solution.

Together they modified the roof of the hall at the print shop’s paper warehouse, giving it a hood that could be opened so that the machine parts could be lifted through it into the hall. Due to persistent heavy frost, the work then had to be interrupted for two weeks. Interim storage facilities for all the participating companies’ machines and materials were thus required at short notice. This is also part of SCHOLPP’s project work, and the schedule was rearranged in consultation with the customer and all stakeholders.

This was particularly important because, in addition to SCHOLPP, more than 50 other companies were involved in the project, some of whom were working in the newspaper company at the same time, installing the new air conditioning and ventilation systems, for instance. Production at the Cottbus site also continued. Access, employee areas and material transport routes had to be kept clear at all times while the work was in progress.

Moving with a large crane, installing with a mini crane

The individual components of the printing press were lifted into the hall with pinpoint precision using a large crane. “We were virtually playing Tetris through the eye of a needle,” says Project Manager Jörg Kellner. As with the dismantling process in Oranienburg, the restricted space required our team to be accurate to the last millimeter during lateral transport and installation in the hall.

This too was only made possible by special lifting technology. A mini crane, which SCHOLPP assemblers refer to as a “caterpillar” because of its appearance, was used to ensure precision positioning of machine components within the assembly hall. The driving and lifting maneuvers required all the “caterpillar” operator’s skills and many years of experience.

Critical to the successful completion of this challenging assignment were detailed technical planning and site preparation, flexible organization, regular communication and mutual respect on the part of the project partners.