NEW ORLEANS — Autologic Information International announced that the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American installed an APS 3850 Wide/120 computer-to-plate device as part of its new, fully automated CTP plate line.

The newspaper plans to purchase another identical unit, possibly later this year.

After running test plates on the machine, the Republican-American (daily, 56,151; Sunday, 68,653) went into live production June 24, when it produced all the plates for its 10,000-copy run of the (New York) Daily News national edition on the APS 3850 Wide/120. At the end of May, the Republican-American picked up the commercial job to print the Daily News six nights a week.

Other products will be converted to CTP quickly, with a target date for the completion of the conversion set for the middle of this month. The newspaper was only 50-percent paginated and was still doing some paste-up when it embarked on the computer-to-plate project. The Republican-American installed a Tecsa copydot scanner provided by Aii, and is working to make better use of its front-end technology to get the paper fully paginated.

One challenge of getting the CTP system up and running was convincing Fuji to supply its LP-NN plate to the North American market. This was accomplished earlier this year with the help of Aii.

Andrea Pape, production director at the Waterbury (Conn.) Republican-American, was on hand in the Aii booth to discuss the newspaper’s recent computer-to-plate installation. Pape is standing in front of a plates that were produced through the CTP plate line. Photo courtesy of Aii

“Everything is working really well, and Fuji has just been terrific,” said Andrea Pape, production director of the Waterbury Republican- American. “The plate is performing extremely well and we’re looking forward to continuing to expand the use of it.”

Pape also praised Aii for working in concert with the newspaper and other vendors to put together a total system solution.

“It’s been a good experience working with Autologic,” Pape said. “A lot of times with companies, they’ll promise you the world, and then they don’t deliver it once they’ve got a check. [Aii has] been great about working with us on every aspect.”

The Republican-American is also using Page Pairing and a graphics RIP that drives a full-page color proofer, all supplied by Aii. The proofer is designed to provide a proof that will match the actual plate output.

“I wanted the vendor to provide me with a front-to-back proposal and products that would meet the workflow, the actual platesetting, the punch-bending and the delivery to the pressroom floor,” Pape said.

Next stop — the pressroom

The pressroom at the Waterbury-Republican is located two stories below the plateroom. An elevator plate transport system was engineered by Burgess Industries Inc. to meet the newspaper’s specifications.

Once the plate comes out of the Glunz & Jensen processor, the Burgess system takes over. The plates are punched and bent, then picked up by the Plate Elevator transport system and delivered to the pressroom 23 feet below, where they are automatically stacked in a precision plate stacking cart.

It was the high level of automation provided by the Burgess system that helped the Waterbury-Republican achieve a return on investment with the CTP system.

“The efficiency of the system eliminated the need for two working areas, any operator involvement, and provided full utilization of maximum space and productivity usage,” said D.J. Burgess, president and chief executive officer of Burgess Industries. “The Burgess Plate Elevator has been well-received throughout North America for plate transport to press towers and unique application requirements of all levels. The system can also move side to side for an overhead transport workflow.”

Choosing the right system

The Republican-American began evaluating CTP technology and the various systems available on the market last year at Drupa. It had been keeping an eye on the cost of the technology, and was waiting for it to become an affordable, viable solution for the newspaper market.

“It seemed that it was the appropriate convergence of the vendors’ ability and the technology catching up with [the market.] It was no longer cost-prohibitive to think that we could get into computer-to-plate and actually have a justification for it,” said Pape, who attended Drupa to evaluate the CTP systems on the market. “[CTP] was readily available enough that the bugs had seemed to have been worked out, and that we weren’t going to be … getting out there too early before the technology was really capable of meeting the time parameters and the cost parameters for newspapers.”

Pape identified 18 CTP vendors, eliminating only those that were geared towards sheetfed and commercial printing operations. She then worked to gain an understanding of the various types of technologies, and how they would be suitable for a newspaper environment, and evaluated the pros and cons of each of the systems.

The information-gathering process took until the end of August, at which point Pape put out a limited request for proposal. A primary consideration for the newspaper was the vendor’s ability to provide an end-to-end solution that would be supported in the future.

“Part of what I was looking for was a vendor that would give us a level of confidence that we would be well-supported, and that it could be a full-system solution. I [wanted to] have the level of confidence that … the systems were actually proven, and that the vendor could not only provide the technology, but install it and support it going forward. We don’t have a full technical staff to just support these types of systems,” Pape explained.

Benefits of CTP

The Republican-American already has realized several benefits by implementing the CTP solution.

During that first CTP run of the New York Daily News, the newspaper trimmed 15 minutes off the production time of the job.

“That makes a huge difference to us in how we can service the client by cutting down our process times,” Pape stated. “For us, that will also mean time savings for the daily paper, eventually.”