Düsseldorf, September 2012  - ‘Times Union’ of Hearst Corporation in Albany, New York US  and
Richmond Times-Dispatch in Mechanicsville, Virginia

Times Union is pleased with the specification of Q.I. Press Controls’ mRC+ colour register automation systems on its new KBA’s Commander CL. Both, Dan Couto – director of operations and Brad Calhoun – IT manager and project manager from ‘Times Union’, visited Drupa 2012 in Düsseldorf in order to study in depth the special mRC+ technology of Q.I. Press Controls which is coming on Times Union’s new newspaper web offset press; a KBA Commander CL with four printing towers.
Taking the modern Commander CL into service will be a major step to ‘Times Union’, leaving letterpress printing in the past and entering the future of cold-set offset printing. This is thus a substantial transfer from letterpress production to offset production. Photos and (info) graphics will become much more lively and legible. It is not only an endorsement of the ambition of Hearst’s newspapers, but particularly as response to the increasing demand from advertisers to provide their full-color advertisements with increased vitality in the newspapers. The Commander CL will be running with Q.I. Press Controls’ mRC+ full-automatic colour register control from day one.

Couto: “We are stepping into an altogether new world. Yet at the same time a logical step to abandon the concept of individually press-operated register control. We looked for a closed-loop colour register system for waste saving, efficiency improvement and to achieve the highest possible quality on its new Commander CL”. Calhoun completes: “We were also searching for transparency of the production process and the security the register control system would just do it’s job. The (micro-marks driven) mRC+ will gives us operational support on the Times Union’s Commander CL by giving operators a complete press feedback-loop in terms of press-monitoring, fine tuning, efficiency and quality. We have been in contact with other mRC+ system users in the USA and they all experienced great satisfaction about the system’s automated performance”. “We believe Q.I. Press Controls should be in the equation in becoming one of the top printers in the world”, Couto concludes. The new Commander is set to start coldset production at ‘Times Union’ in March 2013.

Richmond Times-Dispatch in Mechanicsville, Virginia

The colour capacity and registration control at World Media Enterprises’ Publishing Solutions plant in Hanover County required a special solution…


Darrell S.Foster, production manager at World Media Enterprises

The Hanover plant press setup is extraordinary in that it has long transport routes for the printed newspaper webs. It concerns Mitsubishi Lithopia presses featuring a “comic lead” application for two of each press’ full-colour web leads. A comic lead first passes through a mono unit to apply cyan on each side of the web, then passes through two separate satellite units to pickup magenta, yellow and black. Manually achieving perfect colour registration on a three-unit web lead is very difficult. Production Manager Darrell Foster explained that a new, commercial printing customer requiring full-colour printing throughout their publications was the catalyst to start thinking about how we could meet higher colour capacity and quality expectations. A comprehensive study of five providers of automated printing register systems followed. Q.I. Press Controls was the only one to offer a seamless integration with ABB’s control system, which is an integral and comprehensive press control system. “Apart from the fact that Q.I. Press Controls was the only vendor to adequately address our investigative request for integration with the ABB control system, we also believed that mRC+ with micro-marks was the perfect solution for our challenging application. With the installation and commissioning of mRC+ set for late September, we are confident we can meet the demanding expectations of our new customer while at the same time, offer improved colour capacity, layout flexibility and print quality to Richmond Times-Dispatch and our many existing and future commercial customers.”

Click here to download the pdf