SYRACUSE, N.Y. — Few production executives are brave or confident enough to be early adopters of technology. “Me first” is a battle cry seldom heard in this industry.

However in upstate New York, where winters are long and natives are tough, one man seems to cry “me first” more than others.

Mike Stern, production director at The (Syracuse) Post-Standard has earned a leadership position in the adoption of new production technology.

Michael Stern, production director at 
The Post-Standard, stands on the second 
floor of his newly installed WIFAG OF 370. 
Stern has not shied away from testing 
new technology.
Photo by Mary L. Van Meter


His staff is testing a computer-to-conventional-plate unit from basysPrint. Starting in July, the newspaper has been running the UV-Setter 57 Z in live production runs.

The basysPrint UV-Setter 57 Z is the first CTCP unit operating at a newspaper in the U.S. The technology behind the UV-Setter is not new, however, it has been improved for the demands of newspaper production work. BasysPrint has installed over 250 UV-Setters in commercial production sites around the world. Thirty-five units are located in U.S. commercial sites. There is only one other UV-Setter 57 Z unit installed at a newspaper, the Von Stein in Luneburg, Germany.

The UV-Setter 57 Z (Z stands for zeitung, German for newspaper) uses conventional standard offset plates. The average CTP plate costs twice as much as a conventional offset plate. This is a very important factor, as increased color use demands more plates. According to an industry source, the thermal CTP plate costs about twice as much as the conventional offset plate ($1.79 verses .90 cents). The plates are exposed at a 360- to 450 nanometer wavelength range.

CTCP integrates with CTP

Integrating new technology into an already existing digital workflow has posed a few challenges to the production staff at The Post-Standard (daily, 122,659; Sunday, 177, 729).

Production testing of new technology has its own set of potential nightmares, therefore, one asks why Stern, who is in the process of ramping up the facility’s new WIFAG OF 370 flying plate change, does it.

“You just look straight ahead and have faith that everything will work out,” Stern said. “Testing is going fine and the unit is meeting the parameters established by basysPrint. We find that acceptable.”

A basysPrint UV-Setter 57 Z that is being tested at the newspaper. The unit is averaging 90 plates per hour.
Photo by Mary L. Van Meter

BasysPrint and Stern had established perimeters that no fewer than 75 plates per hour would pass through the UV-Setter 57 Z. In addition, those plates were to be a mix of black-and-white and four-color and have 95 percent of usable image exposed on the plate. Although testing is not complete, the machine is exposing an average of over 90 plates per hour.

The Post-Standard also has two Kodak Polychrome Graphics thermal CTP lines installed. The two KPG units output plates at resolutions of 1,270 dots per inch. The original requirements for the basysPrint CTCP units called for a plate to be RIPped at 900 dpi. In order to integrate the basysPrint unit into the production cycle, the plates had to be RIPped at 1,270 dpi.

The 57 Z machine allows for different plate sizes and the ability to change the register system. To directly expose data, basysPrint developed the Digital Screen Imaging process based on Digital Light Processing from Texas Instruments Inc. The core of the process is a micromirror chip, called the Digital Micromirror Device.

The image is projected on the printing plate with the aid of this micro-mechanical, electronically controlled chip. The number of micromirrors on the chip has been increased from approximately 800,000 to nearly 1.3 million.

Each unit has two 850-watt ultraviolet lamps (or lights), with a replacement cost of $800 per lamp. The lamps need to be replaced after 2500 hours.

Four UV-Setter 57 Z units have been sold to Advance Publications, with two units going to the Staten Island Advance in New York and the other two units heading to the Union-News in Springfield, Mass. BasysPrint officials told Newspapers & Technology that the unit is targeted toward newspapers in the 65,000 to 265,000 circulation range. The unit has a list price of $325,000, which includes fully automatic plate handling, intermediate paper removal, plate magazine for 500 plates and maintenance cost.