Heidelberg GTO52

[Albert Noel]

our company just acquired a smaller shop and we brought in all their equipment.
one peice is a single colour GTO52 (i'd say somewhere in the mid 80's to early 90's model)

anyway, just wondering if there's any quirks/tips or any other things to know about this thing?

just wondering.

Albert

 

[rbailleu]

lots of quirks and stuff to know. but its all easy. what other presses do you have?

 

[Albert Noel]

lots of quirks and stuff to know. but its all easy. what other presses do you have?

we got the gto and an old ab dick from the acquisition and we already have a 5 colour roland 300 and two 2 colour heidie qm-46's

 

[Mechanic]

You will find hat the Gto feeder is more difficult to set, than the ab dick. It has a lot of rollers, including 4 form rollers, It has adjustable oscilation, and coarse register. If the machine is from the middle 80's I would propose to install a Kompac dampening unit. What often brakes down is the one way clutch of the ink fountain roller. If the machine is a "newer" model, it is also equiped with an electromagnet (solenoid) for emgaging-disengaging the front lays. It srugles a lot and dampening solution drops sometimes on it, so it burns often. The solenoid sould be underneath the feeder board on the right side (drive side). Clean and lubricate the swing grippers VERY thoroughly. It is difficult , but you must do it.

 

[Mechanic]

Clean and lubricate the plate clamps very good, dont overtension the nuts of the clamps cuz you will damage the threads.

The GTO is not a very fast machine, but it is an all-arounder. It can do NCR, it can do envelope, It can do light 1 color , it can do heavy solid 4 color. It can do numbering , perforating, even diecutting and imprinting
Take care of the machine and it will take care of yoy

 

[rbailleu]

listen to mechanic he has obviously run a gto. I have seen gto's run all day with very little effort. we had a 200,000 run one time. I cut paper for the run while running it. mostly a great machine. you probably wont run it over 6000 imp/hr I have run one at 7000 iph on good stock, but I dont recomend it on most things that you want to register well. if I had a choice for a single machine in my shop between a qm and a gto. it would be the gto. with your roland I would think about my quality mix on the qm's and adding another plate to the mix.

 

[Albert Noel]

well, i know nothing about the ab dick, never ran one and don't intend to try. i think the plan is to resell it. so i don't think feed will be an issue for me on the gto, having spent the last 7 years on the Roland and 1 on the qm46, with plenty of hours spent in between on a windmill, so it may be a challenge at first, but in all, i dont think it will be so bad.
i was just looking for things/quirks in particular. seems that you guys hit it right on the head though. thank you.

we are going to have a tech check it out thoroughly once it's powered up and ready to go.
looks like the sweep action of the water meter (if you call it that on this thing, with the white sock) is broken. but it also looks like it needs grippers cleaned and greased/oiled.

are those water-form socks hard to change? (the tight red ones? )
i'm not used to the sytem this one has, with the socks and multiple water forms and chrome dampening rollers in general.

how do i tell what year it is? i THINK it's an '87

 

[printerpete]

if you tell us the serial number i can tell you its age

 

[Mechanic]

Personaly , I would sell the crapy , no good , wannabe a printing press, cheap shit QM 46 than the ab dick. The ab dick has way more potential than the purple nightmare with the Heidelberg logo. Ask the technician , if he can change the dampening unit to a Kompac, for your GTO. Believe me, it is worth it.
The molleton system (the red socks that you mentioned) has an excellent printing quality, but it need a lot of maintenance (cleaning , adjusting, consumables, etc).

 

[rbailleu]

cheaply you can go to bareback truck rollers for the gto and not have to buy the kompac. this works but should be adjusted well or you may have more dripping issues. you can also buy 3m sleeve for the form rollers. we tried those for a while but went to truck rollers after that. most of the newer gtos had the date stamped on the tag. I know our 96 did. does it have the control lever only or and panel with run and feed buttons.

 

[GazKL440]

The GTO will do everything you need in small offset, just not exactly quickly in todays terms... they are reliable in the extreme, with very little going wrong with them...ever... and they will register dot on dot all day long if set up correctly. The feeder is easy to set up, and is easy to learn, and is easy to sort out if its playin up a little... the press should have the original maintenance schedule, follow it to the letter and it wont break, add the Kompac system and you will have a very productive small offset machine that will plug away all day and make you money.