One set of three tympan bars for the Heidelberg letterpress printing platens.

These bars are used to clamp the “tympan” or make-ready sheet onto the platen ready for printing.

We supply two long ones for the top and bottom of the platen and the short one for the left-hand side, the right-hand side is clamped by the machines’ built-in gripper edge clamp bar.

These items are generally lost over time and difficult to replace as the machines become rarer. Second-hand items can sometimes be found but tend to be bent or otherwise abused which makes using them difficult.

A straight, dent free tympan bar makes smoothing the tympan sheet easy and speeds up make-ready times.