alfaQuest Technologies is pleased to announce the Columbus (OH) Dispatch is upgrading their legacy PrintExpress Consolidated Production Management system to provide automated plate imposition for the 3V (3 sheets per cylinder revolution) press configuration soon to be implemented at the newspaper.

Keith Roeske, alfaQuest Director of Operations, states: “This is a very exciting project to be a part of. The Dispatch will be implementing many of the new PrintExpress V4.0 features including our Press Manager module, Fan-out Compensation, and Production Monitor.

PrintExpress will import press plans from Harland-Simon, in industry standard XML format, which specify the layout for each of the TKS press lines and determine which of the four press lines are being used in each press run. PrintExpress planner uses the imported plans to automatically configure the imposition module and produce the required number of each plate, uniquely annotating each to specify the unit and cylinder position and which of the four press lines the plate is targeted for. 2D barcodes incorporating this information will be added to each individual plate for the NELA bender and sorter.

By using the Press Manager module, there is tighter integration between the prepress workflow and the presses.”

In addition to the current PrintExpress workflow utilized at the Dispatch, PrintExpress will provide 2V, 3V and 6V page imposition and fan-out compensation applied to individual plates as required. alfaQuest will also supply their web-based Production Monitor which will allow for both internal and remote viewing of the production status for all publications.

“alfaQuest is a long standing press operations partner of ours,”  said Joe Gallo, Executive Vice President and Corporate Chief Information Officer at The Dispatch Printing Co.  “We are confident that alfaQuest’s capabilities will play a significant role in assuring the success of our first use, worldwide, of the 3v printing process.”

Press Manager offers the ability to improve output quality by reducing the effect of web growth (fan-out), improving cylinder adjustments and overcoming wear and tear because of the age of the press. This leads to improved quality control, a more stable printing environment and significant cost savings.

The Press Manager imposition scheme allows operators to enter the press towers in use and the page number for each plate location, it also allows them to signify if the tower will be running in ‘Straight’ or ‘Collect’ mode should your press be able to support this. If running ‘Collect’ then you can enter the page numbers for both high and low plate positions. If however, you are running ‘Straight’ then you can enter only a single number and the Press Manager configures PrintExpress to output two copies of each plate.