by Kieron Kramer, managing editor
Some of you may have noticed, and some may have not noticed, that the Eastwick Press was distributed a day late last week. Some of you waited at retail outlets on Thursday as usual, but this time no paper. Many subscribers received the paper on Saturday or Monday rather than on Friday.
“Why?” you might ask. [private]The simple answer is that a part in a scanner at the Pennysaver Press in Bennington broke. The Pennysaver Press has been printing the Eastwick for many years and consistently so. The scanner is used in the pre-press process; it is a machine called the CTP (Computer to Plate). The CTP takes a digital image, like our PDFs, and transposes it to a film that is then used in the actual printing press. This replaces the outdated procedure using photographic plates.
The CTP uses a laser focuser to do this. The focal glass is moved until the focus is sharp by a small, one inch by one inch, motor that spins a 4 inch shaft. The focal glass was not moving because the shaft broke, and we got the shaft.
Pennysaver Plant Manager Scott Mather said that it is unheard of to have the shaft break. It is so rare that the CTP company outlet in the Midwest didn’t have a spare. A local machinist could not be employed to make a new shaft because the part is patented by the Belgian company that makes the CTP. A new shaft from Belgium was sent for. It arrived by FedEx in Tennessee on Tuesday at 4:14 am, in Albany at 7:11 am, in Pittsfield at 8:30 am and finally in Bennington at 11:15 am. Mather guessed that the shaft was expensive, perhaps costing as much as $2,000.
Last Thursday, the Pennysaver Press rose to the occasion and sent our PDFs, through the cloud, to the parent company, Trumbull Printing, in Trumbull, CT. The Eastwick was printed there and was driven back to Bennington, about a three hour drive, arriving at about 8:30 am on Friday in the bitter cold.
Although there is always the chance that something can go wrong when publishing a newspaper, with luck this will not happen again.[/private]