An 18,000 Pound Printer Goes Out Window
A crane prepares to lower a 9-ton printer from the 4th floor of Central Campus.
It took about a dozen people, a scaffold and a crane to lower the district’s 18,000 pound printer out of a fourth story window at Central Campus. Carroll Fetters got a little choked up. The exit of the printer is the end of an era.
“I came here as a student my sophomore year and worked nights and summers all through high school,” Fetters said. “When I graduated, I was hired on in the print shop.”
The 43-year veteran employee, who now manages the print shop, said back then students took classes on the fourth floor.
“I had three instructors,” he said. “The department was much bigger.”
The printing department was downsized over the years, classes went away and the fourth floor became the district’s central printing office. The printing presses were replaced as the technology improved. Fetters said decades ago printing diplomas was a painstaking process.
“You’d hope to get the graduation list by early December,” he said. “The diplomas would be printed without the names and then each name had to be hand set. It took months.”
Today, the district’s graduation list is sent over in early May and takes about two weeks to complete. The printer being hoisted out the window now produces text books, manuals and newsletters for schools all over the district.
“It’s very fast,” Fetters said. “This printer can print four copies at once, 11,000 sheets in an hour.”
The printer’s productivity and timing are big reasons why it wasn’t disassembled and taken down the elevator, said construction inspection specialist Todd Majeres.
“To make sure all of that would be taken apart and put back together exactly the way it was, just wasn’t going to work,” Majeres. “So we took out the windows and we’re craning it down onto a truck and driving it over to the Dean office.”
The rest of the fourth floor is already under construction. Soon, it will be classroom space for SCAVO students. Those students are currently studying at Moore Elementary. When they leave, Moore will be remodeled for use by elementary students.
Fetters, who first walked onto this floor when he was 15-years-old, will say goodbye to it for good.
“I’ll probably never work up here (on the fourth floor) again,” Fetters said. “It’s hard. But we’ve got new digs over on Dean Avenue. They put about a half-million dollars into a new print shop over there. I think I can take that as a compliment.”
Photos of Crane Hoisting Printer Out of Central Campus
