The Times Herald Record in Middletown, N.Y., is retrofitting its press and folder controls using hardware and software from Harland Simon.

Production Director Fred J. Stanton III said the upgrade is part of a larger project that includes the installation of digital inkers, a computer-to-plate system and a web-width reduction. All of the project’s components will be completed early next year, he said.

Harland Simon is installing six of its Prima 6000 consoles, equipped with automatic online soft proofing and direct ink presetting, to manage The Times Herald Record’s two Goss International Corp. Metroliner presses.

“Our current controls are obsolete,” Stanton said, referring to the paper’s decades’-old presses. “The new system will also allow us to exploit our CTP foundation.”

CTP part of project

The Times Herald Record (daily, 80,148; Sunday, 86,350) is installing two violet Advantage CLS CTP systems from Agfa and associated punch/bending equipment from Glunz & Jensen K&F Inc. It’s also installing digital page packs from Controls Group Inc. and reducing the height of the tabloid Times Herald Record from 16 inches to 14 inches.

The new Prima controls “will help us optimize our other equipment from prepress and plate management to reporting,” Stanton said.

As part of the control upgrade, Harland Simon is also eliminating proprietary communications systems and replacing them with an Ethernet/IP network that connects master PLCs and remote I/Os at the units.

Automatic proofing, reporting

The consoles will feature automatic online soft proofing and a suite of performance-monitoring apps that include direct ink presetting, Stanton said. The apps will also mesh with the CGI inkers and technotrans spraybar dampeners.

John Staiano, senior vice president at Harland Simon, said the Ottaway Newspapers Inc.-owned Times Herald Record is the first Ottaway unit to order controls from the vendor. Previously, it installed imposition software at another Ottaway paper, The Record in Stockton, Calif., and it also installed totalizing and newsprint allocation software at 17 plants owned by Ottaway’s parent, Dow Jones.