A Visit to a Printing Company

Today is the day we visit my nephew, Sam, at work.  We took our time this morning getting ready because we didn’t have to be there until 11:30.

It was nice to have a relaxing morning.  We left for Abbotsville around 10:45 and arrived a few minutes early. 

We stopped at the reception desk and asked for my nephew.  Of course they knew who we were and paged him to come to the reception area.  Sam arrived with his usual smile and took us on a tour of the entire building and introduced us to everyone who worked there. 

The building is a former dairy and the tile floors and narrow stairwells full of stairs, stairs and more stairs made this very evident.  Hannah was a real trooper climbing all the stairs on her crutches. 

Sam gave us an overall picture of everything the company does from printing business cards to full newspapers.  He walked us through the procedures he follows to get the printing press ready for the newspapers and flyers they print.

All employees use the Macintosh computers except Sam.  The printing layouts are sent to him on a Macintosh and he then transfers them to a PC to for transmittal to the template machine.  Each color print job requires four different templates.  One for each color, magenta, cyan, yellow and black.

This company also does some camera layout work and they have a darkroom with a light safe revolving door.  There is also another entrance but the kids loved using the light safe.  They couldn’t get enough.  Sam told us that all the kids who tour the building love it.

We moved on to the actual printing press.  Sam explained the large print rolls of paper and how they are used.  He got into the machine and showed the kids the four colors of ink used.  He told them that they are all soy based and safe to eat.  Hannah challenged him to show her and he dipped his finger into the yellow and touched it to his tongue and tasted it.  She went, eeeyewww. 

Sam showed the kids some of the jobs they have done and how they recycle everything in the shop.
Sam did a great job and the kids loved the tour.  Back to Diana’s for dinner and more games tonight.

Check in to see what adventures come our way tomorrow.