A Goss system to reduce web breaks and help users get compensation from mills may be the first of a new range.

The company launched the ContiVision system last month after registering the trademark in June.

The web break analysis system will help newspaper and commercial press users identify the cause of breaks, prevent recurrences, and provide evidence for achieving compensation in the case of paper flaws.

Goss Contiweb director of sales and service Rutger Jansen says “at least half of all web breaks” currently remain unexplained and unresolved, leaving the printer to absorb resulting costs from waste and press downtime: “As they increasingly look for ways to reduce the cost-to-print and keep their presses operating round the clock, the ContiVision system represents a powerful opportunity for those in the web offset arena.”

The system receives up to 80 signals from cameras and sensors strategically positioned throughout the pressline, monitoring, measuring and analysing the forces interacting with the paper web through its entire print production journey.

If it detects the small changes in web tension that signal a web break, the system correlates all data to determine crucial factors, including time and location of a web break, process circumstances at the break moment, and variations in paper quality, such as holes or cracks.

Algorithms consider the data in relation to approximately 300 possible system failures to establish the most likely cause, providing step-by-step validation of the conclusion and automatically generating a report. This report can be reviewed locally as well as remotely via VPN connection by a specialist Goss Contiweb control centre.

“Successful beta-testing of the ContiVision system has confirmed that this technology truly takes the guesswork out of identifying the cause of web breaks and preventing repeated breaks,” Jansen says. “At a time when every printer needs to reduce unnecessary expense, this technology presents a clear advantage.”

With newsprint the biggest cost in newspaper production, printers are constantly looking for ways of reducing web breaks – which cause waste and disrupt production – and identify mill faults. In the UK, News Corp subsidiary Newsprinters in Broxbourne even maintains a ‘name and shame’ policy, identifying troublesome rolls and their makers.

Goss filed for the ContiVision tade name in June, covering “optical, surveying, measuring, signalling apparatus and instruments, particularly auxiliary equipment of printing presses, particularly apparatus and instruments for sensing, logging and analysing process states in a printing press, particularly apparatus and instruments for sensing, logging and analysing process states of a web in a web-fed printing press, particularly apparatus and instruments for detecting and analysing a web break in a web-fed printing press, data processing equipment”.