Broken dot on plate and print

[falvarado]

We are experimenting a problem with the dots on Kodak Thermal Direct plates, we have compared them with our previous plates from Kodak, the Sword plates, and we see that the formation of dots do not have a round figure but a broken dot and this, when we print, gives us a snowflake look on the prited sheet. We would appreciate very much if someone has had this kind of problems with Processless Kodak Thermal Direct plates? We have checked out our CTP and M1000 press and we find these sttings are within the adequate settings. We would appreciate any help you can give us.
Thank you.
Regards,
Francisco Alvarado

 

[gordo]

We are experimenting a problem with the dots on Kodak Thermal Direct plates, we have compared them with our previous plates from Kodak, the Sword plates, and we see that the formation of dots do not have a round figure but a broken dot and this, when we print, gives us a snowflake look on the prited sheet. We would appreciate very much if someone has had this kind of problems with Processless Kodak Thermal Direct plates? We have checked out our CTP and M1000 press and we find these sttings are within the adequate settings. We would appreciate any help you can give us.
Thank you.
Regards,
Francisco Alvarado

Can you post a picture?
Have you tried making the halftone in PShop to see how its dots compare with what you get with your RIP?
Has this problem just appeared? Is it just one job or are all jobs having the problem?

Best, gordo

 

[falvarado]

Dear Gordo:
Thank you for your fast reply. I will give it a try doing your suggestion. This is the first time we have experienced this problem. We have a hunch, that this has started when we began using Kodak Thermal Direct plates. Before we used Kodak Sword plates and we did not experimented any of these problems. We have eliminated the possibility of being a mis calibration of our CTP, because we had a Screen technician check it out. And also the press has been thoroughly checked up. Has anyone else have problems with processless plates? As for posting the pictures that I do have, I am trying to attach them:
These make the comparison between the dot on two different plates: Sword and Thermal Direct. I hope you can see them
Thank you.
Regards,
Francisco Alvarado

 

[falvarado]

Dear Gordo:
We have a print of what the RIP from our CTP is putting out, and we find that the broken dot is comming from our CTP. As soon as I have an image I will again send this to you for your evaluation. In your previous question about making a dot on Pshop, this we cannot do, because what makes of dots is within the CTP. I will forward this image so you can see it.
Reagards,
Francisco Alvarado

 

[gordo]

You can make dots in PShop for testing. Just make a grayscale small vignette that goes from 0% to 100%. Then do a mode change from grayscale to bitmap using a round dot at the same lpi that you use on your RIP and the same DPI that you use for your CTP. The idea is to create halftone dots that you can see before they are imaged to plate. If you can RIP an image in your workflow and open that bitmap in PShop then you could do that instead. What you are looking for is how the original dot changes as it goes from bitmap to plate to press sheet. That helps to find out when and what is changing the dots.

Best, gordo

 

[falvarado]

Dear Gordo:
I will go ahead with your recomendations. Meanwhile I have sent by separate e-mail, images of what we have found from
the RIP, before they were sent to plate. Here you can see that the dot is broken in the RIP before a plate was made.
As soon as I make the est on Pshop, I will give you this information. Thank you very for your help.
Regards,
Francisco Alvarado

 

[falvarado]

Dear Gordo:
I will go ahead with your recomendations. Meanwhile I have sent by separate e-mail, images of what we have found from
the RIP, before they were sent to plate. Here you can see that the dot is broken in the RIP before a plate was made.
As soon as I make the est on Pshop, I will give you this information. Thank you very for your help.
Regards,
Francisco Alvarado