Heidelberg KRZ / KSBZ

We printed on these to produce manuals and contour maps, they were fitted for rubber stereo mounts . we didnt smash impression into the sheet as is fashionable now , I know some models ran using slide in shells but they were offset letterpress and impression is not possible in offset printing KoR
On the KRz you would only gain heavy impression to the detriment of the press after all they were meant to just nipp the image against the stock not grunt and rumble as you will when you force impression into the stock . Another point is the leaded shells wont last long with heavy impression ,not used them in my time but i know there were limitations in their uses ,as there is with flatbed type .
Platens do crunching ,cylinders print , They were designed that way for a reason !

Yes, indeed, I ran a KSBZ press as a student in 1974, with a combination form of Monotype-set forms with color page borders made on photopolymer plates mounted on the cylinder. That took lots of planning and tedious lockup, but worked quite well. A part of the pre-press set-up involved the slight stretch encountered when the plate is mounted on the cylinder. It tends to lengthen the image just slightly around the cylinder. Usually not enough to bother on a small form, but will show up in a large form on the press.

I also mounted shallow-relief photopolymer plates on the cylinder of the KORD offset press and printed a four-color job without dampening. Pretty heady stuff for a college kid. I had everyone standing around the press by the time the fourth color hit the sheets.

John Henry

These were good presses much quicker than the flatbeds , as you said set up took a while with peripheral problems but run on the same press every pass and you were fine . In my early days the challenge for us was to get the print image length to fit from the kord to the early MOE and vice versaso that the black hits came of the KORD it was ok for the work we did where there were common graphics with multiple black overprint plate changes .
The kord as a litho unit was ok but for the point at which the inker lifted from the plate as impression knocked off leaving a half inked plate that on re start would re ink so you could see the double inked portion on screens .
It was built for speed and it diid that well with gales of air off the pump only the delivery was a pain on heavy stock but you dont see a great deal of rope manilla board these days .Best liked to a plank !

Folks, don’t confuse the KRZ with the KSBAZ. The KRZ is an all-rotary press, the KSBAZ a flabed with added rotary unit.
I would think photopolymer use is possible with the proper cylinder shell for specific plate thickness. Then you have to allow for image stretch for the mounted plate, unless the plate is exposed in-the-round. This true for the KSBAZ rotary unit as well.
I think the all-rotary presses have a common impression cylinder, as do the flatbed-rotaries. This means any heavy impression that distorts the packing is going to create problems such as image distortion, especially if there is overprinting.

Put lightly they were built for printing ,and they did it well .