Advice for Conventional Plate Plastter

[leo]

Hi everybody,

We plan to purchase one CcTP machine (conventional plate platesetter). Anybody here has experience?
We want to hear something about famous brand for platesetter, manufacture for conventional plate, pricing,quality of printing, profit, maintaince,...
Any idea is much appreciate
Thanks in advance

[spectrecom]

Well, here are your choices that I know of.....

BasysPrint
Cron
Luscher

I would say from experience that BasysPrint is the best choice....we have 4 of them we use in 2 of our printing plants. We are a dealer for BasysPrint and I personally have been to the Basys factory and am a certified engineer to service and install the mercury lamp units. I was recently in Belgium and saw the new laser diode technology and am impressed. These systems are expensive but the lower cost of the UV plates offset that cost and more, particularly if you are a newspaper house or a large volume plate user. These machines are built very well with German engineering and are very fast. Basys has a long track record and have perfected the design and if you see it you will be impressed.

I have no experience with Luscher but have heard some negative things, its a strange design, I would suggest talking with users to see what they say to be fair.

Cron is a new product on the market from China, we are looking at this technology because of the price. I know a dealer who has sold several of the units and likes them, I have also heard they break down all the time...so once again you need to speak with an end user.

We are selling a CHEM FREE Thermal plate now and it was discovered recently that it works on the BasysPrint and is super fast and was just certified by Basys....but if you want the real savings stick with the UV plates and we are offering the lowest cost quality UV plate at Sabre Plate Solutions.... check out Home Page for info on our plates. We have been using both the positive and negative UV plates on our Basys units with great results.

[PeterW]

The CtCP maybe a great technological idea, but it is extremely difficult and expensive to maintain and service this equipment, not to mention the exorbitant initial investment.

[leo]

For Conventional platesetter, Basys and Luescher Grad are two famous names?

[spectrecom]

Peter, your response may have been accurate 4 or 5 years ago, but when a newspaper or high volume user saves $20,000 USD per month on plate costs you can quickly see the advantages of going with Basys. The technology is solid now and very reliable. Yes, there are costs involved with maintaining a high tech piece of hardware but in my opinion it is worth it. If you have a good trained engineer available for service and you don't do stupid things like use tap water in your coolant or run in a dirty environment with no air conditioning, which a lot of printers try and do, no CTP holds up very long.

[ansoft]

I have some experience with Luescher Conventional platesetter and I am really impressed. Yes, it is internal drum and looks strange, but its performance is great. It is 3 or 4 years old and the investment was really big.

[TLala]

Hi everybody,

We plan to purchase one CcTP machine (conventional plate platesetter). Anybody here has experience?
We want to hear something about famous brand for platesetter, manufacture for conventional plate, pricing,quality of printing, profit, maintaince,...
Any idea is much appreciate
Thanks in advance

As a Luescher user since 4 years, I suggest You should find a company where they use a machine and ask them directly. If you can feed the machine 24/7 making plates, it is not a question, ctcp worth the price. Mechanically, the machine is undestructible, robust, but You have to make good conditions (as mentioned above). If the salesman forgot to tell you, the machine has an important part, the slipring, you have to change it about 80 million rounds. The price is 2000 Euro.

[jun]

We are using Basys Print UV setter 850 for almost 2 years now. It runs perfectly, and in 2 years time the engineer only service it once.