Letter Press Presses
Hi, I’m new to letterpressing, but I find it absolutely fascinating. I own a small print shop and would like to look into letterpressing. Anyways, my question is, are there any modern commercial presses out there that can do letterpress? Am I only limited to old used heidlbergs, kelseys, c&ps, sigwalts, etc. etc.? Are there any manufacturers that produce new letterpress presses? and is there a difference between letterpress and embossing?
The Brandtjen & Kluge Company in St. Crois Falls, WI still sells platen presses for hot stamping and die cutting, but I don’t see any ink printing presses listed on the website. They do sell remanufactured or rebuilt presses, so may have some of the later model inking presses available. They will not sell parts or service any of the older style unguarded presses as they see that as a liability to them, and have basically disowned those early presses, even going so far as issuing a letter to owners to have those presses destroyed. See http://kluge.biz/index.php?page=contact for contact info in your area.
There have been some threads on this site about Japanese manufacture of Adana-like presses, but other than specialized label-printing presses (the Shiki presses being a prime example), I don’t know of any letterpress presses being made today for industrial use.
John Henry
“iron hand press”
H F Rochat London are manufacturing brand new Albion presses about mid size but you would need about £11000………..Hugo boss at polymetaal.nl is/are making hydraulic relief presses that would do letterpress and embossing, Beevers Engineering Ltd is also making a hydraulic relief press probably best for lino/woodcuts but possibly hand fed letterpress in a small way in uk seems ok but of course these are had fed…..big platen presses are made for cutting creasing etc like Crossland? Peter Luckhurst can give you more info re these maybe’s but whether they are inking as well……………you are thinking of cylinder or platen presses?????