You can teach old iron new tricks.

Thanks to an upgrade of its press control, inking and spray dampening systems, The Hartford (Conn.) Courant expects to trim waste, improve the quality of first papers off and, most important, take advantage of virtually hands-free printing on a decades-old pressline, said Press Manager Ken Coates, who spearheaded the project.

The upgrade, using technology from Rockwell Automation, Goss International Corp. and technotrans, respectively, was expected to conclude last month. But early tests and implementation of the first three components of the four-phase upgrade resulted in a 40 percent drop in start-up and printed waste, Coates said.

Ken Coates, pressroom manager at The Hartford (Conn.) Courant, orchestrated a systems upgrade that will help the newspaper reduce waste and boost print quality.
Photo: Matt Massagli

After all of the systems are in production, Coates anticipates that The Courant will be able to trim its waste by an additional 20 percent, have every page clean up at the same time and achieve ink densities within .03 of Newspaper Association of America production targets on a consistent basis.

“I don’t want to imply that these upgrades are going to result in perfect production every time,” Coates said. “But it is another tool that will help us improve our operation.”  

Retooled spraybars

At the heart of the system are retooled technotrans spraybar dampener systems attached to each of The Courant’s four Goss Metro presses.

The dampeners feature nozzles that precisely apply a fine mist of water through pulsating heads, said Tom Carbery, technotrans’ vice president.

The dampeners mesh with the paper’s Goss digital inkers, enabling The Courant to apply water and ink with equal accuracy.

“I challenged technotrans to develop an upgrade to an existing system that could digitally match the capabilities of our Goss digital inking,” he said. “Through my input and feedback, technotrans delivered what I needed. These upgrades can help other pressroom operations achieve these results on older systems as well.”

The final component of the upgrade is The Courant’s Rockwell press control system. Pressmen will be able to use 18 programmable operating parameters and eight different curves to oversee individual couple settings, giving The Courant ample ability to fine-tune its production.

Technotrans engineers in 2004 began the project to bolster the existing 1997-model spraybars with new booster boards, nozzles, software and coils, Carbery said. Individual regulators installed at each unit and similar devices at half decks maintain proper pressure for each print couple.

Checking pressure

To ensure consistency, The Courant deployed a volume verifier that enables maintenance staff to test each spraybar for proper nozzle flow and bar position.

“We have all of our maintenance staff trained on volume verification, which we found very crucial throughout the upgrade and installation to be able to verify that all the nozzles have the same output,” Coates said. “It had a drastic affect on the ability to run virtual hands-free printing.”

Tests conducted over the last year convinced Coates that harnessing the digital inkers, spraybar system and press control system could dramatically improve print quality while reducing printed waste.

“Through the testing, the unit (equipped with the upgraded systems) was totally hands-free on every run. So then we purchased the upgrades,” he said.

Coates said the first set up and test run with eight of the 18 parameters included eight units and 20 couples with multiple four-color pages.

On a press run of 320,000 copies, Coates said that only two positions needed adjustment on one couple, which was attributed to a mechanical issue. Everything else ran with no adjustment to ink or water from preset and maintained .02 to .03 of NAA target density, he said.

The startup to good copy was within the 400-copy range.

“The red ran differently than the cyan or yellow, so we were able to establish a red, yellow, black and cyan curve,” he said. “That was the key to be able to start the press up and maintain proper ink/water balance and density (to) set NAA standards, which are well within the specs.”

Prior to the upgrade the paper only used one curve, one multiplier and eight operating parameters for each press.

That generated a greater number of unusable copies because “each unit was reacting differently and you are (generating) higher waste trying to get the other units to come together,” Coates said. “When we upgraded, we could fine-tune everything so that each and every page cleaned up at the same time.

“The print quality was enhanced as well because we have digital dampening to match the digital inking. It allows us to start up so there are no major adjustments.”

With the upgrades almost in place, Coates said the dampeners can apply water at very accurate 10-millisecond pulses, a rate difficult to achieve before.

“The technotrans system is the most even dampening I’ve seen out of any spraybar system,” Coates said. “This is the closest thing I’ve seen to spiral-brush dampening without the maintenance.”

Available components

The Courant is the first paper to upgrade its technotrans system with the additional components, which can be stitched to any existing technotrans spraybar system, Carbery said.

“By (making the components backward-compatible), customers can improve the performance of (their) dampening system without a complete system replacement,” he said. “Therefore, upgrades of this nature can be paid by a maintenance budget as opposed to a capital equipment purchase.”

Coates said papers can achieve similar results even if they don’t have a modern control system as long as they are getting good presets to their digital inkers.

“From what we learned, precise dampening is the key component to success,” he said.

Other newspapers planning to follow The Courant’s footsteps are The (Baltimore) Sun and The Boston Globe.

Coates said his next project is to roll out a chemical-free water treatment system that prevents the growth of algae and fungi. He is also in the initial stages of implementing a start-up sequence that allows a pre-emulsion of ink and water before they are applied to plates and paper. He said early tests indicate a further reduction in start-up waste of between 150 and 200 copies.