LA HULPE, BELGIUM, Oct. 21—In 2006, Freie Presse Chemnitz completely overhauled its mailroom and print facilities when it purchased innovative new CTP and plate processing equipment, including four Kodak Generation News Platesetters. The upgrade significantly boosted the company’s production capacity and quality, and marked the transition to a fully automated prepress production, from plate logistics to output on the web presses.
State-of-the-art newspaper printing technology
Freie Presse Chemnitz began its reinvestment program by replacing four of its web offset printers with three, high-speed MANROLAND COLORMAN Presses. The systems boast two nine-cylinder satellite towers, which achieve up to 45,000 revolutions an hour, making them around 50% faster than the existing systems that the company had used since 1993. The latest machines also facilitate four-color production, a feature deemed essential for Freie Presse’s future success.
Matching prepress technology
After enhancing its pressroom facilities, Freie Presse Chemnitz turned its attention to its prepress department. The company believed that this area of the business was underperforming, mainly because of increased productivity in the pressroom, extensive use of color, and ever-more exacting quality specifications. Plus the existing platesetters only imaged plates that were sensitive to visible light, which affected where the plates could be handled. The specific plates came only in panorama format, meaning they required cutting to achieve the single-plate format required for optimal throughput.
Freie Presse Chemnitz refitted the prepress room with four Kodak Generation News Platesetters in Z speed version, which can comfortably handle the printer’s average daily requirement of more than 2,500 plates.
No regrets about the CTP technology switch
Freie Presse’s managers compared the performance of its original platesetting equipment with Kodak’s CTP technology and were impressed with the results. “Kodak promised us 270 plates per hour, although today we manage up to 312 plates an hour with our 346 x 526mm format,” says Erik Hofmann, Deputy Technical Director at Chemnitzer Verlag und Druck GmbH & Co. KG. “On average, we achieve between 275 and 280 plates on each of the platemaking lines when we use the complete, fully automatic plate workflow.”
Maximum throughput with the KODAK GENERATION NEWS Platesetter
Owing to its high throughput, the Kodak CTP solution enables last-minute printing, ensuring the printed information medium is more up to date. Plus the speed and functional reliability of the Generation News Platesetters means that the prepress operators no longer need to make any allowances for extra time when it comes to prioritizing and managing the print queue.
The Kodak Generation News Platesetter also impressed Freie Presse’s decision makers with its four internal plate cassettes, which can hold a total of 1,600 single plates or 800 panorama plates with a thickness of 0.3 mm, including slip sheets.
Stability that opens new market opportunities
The Kodak squarespot Imaging Technology plays a vital role by ensuring the stability and reproducibility of the platemaking process. “The technology will make our entry into production with finer screens much easier,” says Hofmann. “There are already plans to move beyond the traditional 110lpi AM linescreen, both for our own publications and customer jobs. Plus we’re going to test and install AM hybrid and FM screening techniques to optimize image quality in coldset web offset.”
A plate to raise the bar in quality output
The Kodak ThermalNews Gold Digital Plate supports this with its ability to transfer a tonal range from 2% to 98%, even with 150lpi. Plus, the plate is highly robust and offers a run length of more than 150,000 impressions.
Automation at its best: effortless CTP and plate logistics
Each automatic step in the digital platemaking process is controlled by a ppi PRINTNET Output Management System. This means the prepress department only needs to be staffed by one operator per shift, who only has to ensure that each platesetter is loaded with the necessary plates so that they can run at maximum capacity.
About Freie Presse
With 19 local editions and a circulation of more than 310,000 copies, Freie Presse in Chemnitz is Saxony’s biggest daily Publication, and is published on Monday through to Saturday.
Freie Presse is printed overnight in straight production at Chemnitzer Verlag und Druck GmbH & Co.’s print center on the western fringe of this East German city. Supplementary pre-prints are produced for the newspaper in the daytime on four days a week.
In addition to the daily newspaper, the web presses also print 18 regional ad journals under the name BLICK, which together add up to a weekly circulation in excess of 1.1 million. The production portfolio is rounded off by various external contracts.
About Kodak
As the world’s foremost imaging innovator, Kodak helps consumers, businesses, and creative professionals unleash the power of pictures and printing to enrich their lives.
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In the graphic communications market, Kodak offers the broadest portfolio of integrated solutions to help customers grow their business. For more information, visit www.graphics.kodak.com. For downloading photos and videos from Kodak’s image library, visit www.kodak.com/go/gcimages.
(Kodak, Generation News, Thermalnews Gold, squarespot and Mercury are trademarks of Eastman Kodak Company.)
2009
