Chem-free Process-free Plates Again

[jlind]

This is a real story, a press operator's concern that the wrong choice will be made, and harm his XL105, not to mention other headaches like remakes. What are the choices? This forum knows:
Presstek Aurora
Agfa Azura
Fuji something
Kodak Thermal Direct

Purchasing sees that the Thermal Direct are cheapest, but we see murmurs of performance issues in these cyber communiques. Poor readout. Where does that stuff go on the press? Didn't this thing flunk in the market back when 3M made plates? How committed is Kodak to this market anyway? Why is it when he calls the printers that are using the plate now, they imply that they are moving on to another product? Concern Concern Concern.

Azura, pretty good reviews here, though some discussion of whether it's really chem free. So what if it's water and gum, if it's off the press development. There's a price issue, even though they are already an Agfa account, a violet customer at the moment. Their platesetter has whiskers and parts are getting scarce, and thus the raison to change. Why not go eco along with the FSC stuff.

Then there is the original chem and process free, Presstek Aurora. Personally one of my favorites, especially after their CEO drank the rinse water at a trade show. Now THAT'S chem free. (He's still alive and well by last accounts.)

Of course the press operator has drank the Heidelberg Kool Aid and wants the Suprasetter with Sapphira, knowing it's an Azura product. He's not purchasing, just doing some guerilla market research.

Let's have some MORE discussion about these pressing concerns, please. We will all benefit and maybe you will help avoid a bad business decision.

John Lind
Cranberry Township, PA
724-776-4718

 

[Cory Smith]

I think with Fuji's recent announcement , the trend seems to be off-line processing. While On-press cleanout appears to be a viable solution, it still has drawbacks (how do you read a plate? Short shelf life after imaging).

I'm not familiar with the Aurora product but believe that can only be used on some particular imaging devices.

With Fuji, Agfa and Kodak; be sure to do your research on imaging speeds and laser intensity, I believe Agfa has updated their plates so most platesetters can run at full speed (or near full speed). Not sure about Fuji and Kodak.

I'm sure Steve can chime in on the new Azura plates (Azura TS?) with what has changed.

Get lots of test plates and try em out!

 

[SteveAgfa]

Cory:

Your suggestion ...

<snip> Get lots of test plates and try em out! <snip>

... is perhaps the most telling of all.

After a quick press test with a GATF test form, I just
sent out some exposed Azura TS plates for a live job
going on press tomorrow. And, none of us will be there
to monitor! (I'd like to see how our competition responds to
such a customer request with an on-press clean-out plate.)

And now - with our 5-year celebration recognizing the launch of our
Azura at Drupa 2004, we're doing the Willy Wonka thing - where
we're hiding some golden tickets inside boxes of Azura.

If you are already an existing Azura customer, carefully
check your Agfa Graphics plate deliveries in the coming
weeks as they might contain a winning ticket. During the
campaign period we are hiding 225 winning tickets randomly
in our plate deliveries, all over the world.

For more information:

AGFA.com - Happy Birthday, ThermoFuse.

Regards,

 

[Ritter]

As a prepress operator I've used Kodak and Heidelberg (Agfa) "processless" thermal plates as well as Heidelberg (Agfa) "full process" violet plates as well as an Agfa film to frame violet "full process" plates. I've used Agfa, Creo-Kodak, Heidelberg, and Glunz and Jensen equipment to expose/process the previously mentioned plates. I worked through a migration from CtF with frame exposed plates to Heidelberg thermal, Kodak thermal to Heidelberg thermal.

My thoughts are fairly simple and straight forward. In all of these migrations we had absolutely zero issues with press compatibility, chemicals or loss of run length. Heidelberg (Agfa) thermal plates were cleaner than the Kodak plates in my experience to both my hands, the platesetter and the online processor). Thermal plates also have an added advantage of not needing safelight. The processor was cleaned quarterly and didn't really need much more than a rinse with a water hose. The gum jug involved was recirculated and was replaced monthly or on an as needed basis (if volume was high). My experiences with violet full process plates is that they are messy, expensive to maintain as far as the equipment goes, sensitive and fickle to the point of being a major pain not to mention that the chemicals are messy and are so harsh they literally destroy equipment. Oh yeah AND they require safelight. Yes full process violet plates have some supposed advantages such as run length and are seen as traditional. I've yet to meet hardly any printers that typically exceed even 50k impressions on a set of plates on normal runs. The argument is pretty much null at that point. If you really have a run every once in a while with a million impressions run an extra set of plates or two and charge at cost rather than trying to make an obscene markup on the extra sets.

I'm not a fan of violet plates in any form but thermal plates are a dream to work with and are incredibly forgiving. I am a huge fan of Heidelberg's Suprasetter especially paired with the power of the Prinect workflow. The Suprasetter itself is available in many different models beyond only size to fit your needs and budget. It is a great machine and by far the nicest and most reliable that I have worked with.

I am an end-user and in no way affiliated with Heidelberg, Agfa, Kodak, Creo, G&J or any other vendor.

 

[SteveAgfa]

John:

Long time no see!

To your point...

<snip>
This is a real story, a press operator's concern that the wrong choice will be made, and harm his XL105...
<snip>

I'm not sure if the XL 105 is available with the Anicolor inking feature, but the Thermofuse technology found in Azura is the only chem-free/processless plate technology endorsed to pair-up with the beneifts of the Anicolor system by Heidelberg.

Regards

 

[SteveAgfa]

Cory:

You asked...

<snip>
I'm sure Steve can chime in on the new Azura plates (Azura TS?) with what has changed.
<snip>

Basically - three things have changed from Azura to Azura TS:
Improved sensitivity, improved clean-out, and increased contrast.

- Imaging on our Acento 4-up platesetters, the imaging speed has increased by 50%.

- The improved Azura TS Gum has the look and feel of a traditional gum, and is more
efficient in cleaning-out the unexposed emulsion. It also now has a neutral pH of 7.

- When it comes down to increased contrast - a picture is worth a thousand words...

 

[marktonk]

Hey John,

What color is that Heidelberg Koolaid???? Is it Gray? I will not get into a long e-mail the on the attributes of the Suprasetter but will just quote Andrew Tribute's June 11th Drupa article titled Computer to Plate (CtP) at drupa.

"Today one could say that CtP has become a mature technology with a high level of take-up in the many parts of the world. Thermal CtP has become established as the technology of choice in most areas of commercial CtP with Dainippon Screen being the market leader as the CtP engine supplier both under its own name and through a large number of OEMs. Kodak has maintained its strong position. Neither of these two companies has really introduced improved technology, just larger and slightly faster versions of their CtP engines. Heidelberg’s Suprasetter, the CtP engine with probably the most advanced thermal imaging technology has substantially increased its market position and it introduced a number of new larger and faster engines at drupa."


The good news is with the latest Saphira Chemfree plates, on allot of the Suprasetters models, we image at engine speed.


But it is more than just CtP, perhaps the press operator appreciates that with Prinect, we can preset up to 23 or was it 24 items on the XL, a bit more than just presetting the ink fountains. Nothing wrong with a faster makeready.

Or maybe the operator appreciates that if he has a problem, one phone call is made to resolve it whether is it's prepress, press, post press or consumables, no finger pointing.

Best regards,

Mark

 

[jlind]

I greatly appreciate those comments. Yeah, the Koolaid is gray and the hook is the Prinect system. Very impressive tools on the XL105 already. Corey drives to the heart of the matter, as a fellow printer: get some plates in and test test test. This has not happened yet, which is maybe good given the state of this discussion. Whatever plates show up will be running the ISO 12647/G7 test form.

How many test runs does a wise printer make? Don't you have to test for a week or so? At 5 sheets per second, what does "number of sheets to roll up clean" mean? Do you still look at ink and water wash out latitude? I agree that run length is not so important, as long as it will hit 25,000. More important, in my experience, might be resistance of the plate coating to chemicals and solvents that the printer is already using. Or resistance to very low VOC cleaning materials. Is this still an issue with thermal plates? Of the four plate candidates, are there differences in compatibility with alcohol substitutes? How important is the speed of the platesetter and throughput in these economic times? What CTP processor ISN'T faster than film to plate?

The whole thing boils down to this: The LAPV system is past it's time (though still working great out there on press right now!) There are big advantages in a less chemically intensive development process, and that's where the printer wants to go. Fits well with FSC. All the choices for now are thermal, and that means a platesetter sale for someone.

Any experiences to report from Aurora users?

John Lind
Cranberry Township, PA
724-776-4718

 

[Ritter]

In response to your speed question... and I know I'm going to sound like a salesman for Heidelberg but I've seen the vision and I'm ready for it. I haven't drank the koolaid per se and probably never will as every vendor has strengths and weaknesses. Compare, compare, compare, research, research, research. I've sat through more webinars and demos, read through just about everything I can get my hands on and listened to countless presentations before I came to the conclusions I am at.

Even the A model Suprasetters (not available for your XL105 size) are plenty fast for short-run 1/4 and 1/2 size operations. Being half-size this was the major hangup with my management when I threw my eggs in the Heidleberg basket. It was claimed it just wasn't fast enough. A few months in it was a marvel to them at which the speed a job could come in plant and hit the press. The speeds have only increased since then. The modularity of the Suprasetters diodes are one of it's major strengths.

The following will most likely either terrify you or excite you, most people don't seem to be prepared for this mentally or can't get their heads around it at all but it is slowly becoming the new reality.
In a conjunction with the use of an automated platesetter with loaded cassettes a highly automated workflow with a web based interface for customer proofing and approval the prepress process can be streamlined even further. If the customer can approve the job through the web the platestter can be left running 24 hours a day (if it errors, it will e-mail or text message the appropriate people) releasing plates immediately or queued until it's scheduled release (provided you have an MIS that can feed the workflow JDF). With MetaDimension and MetaShooter plates/proofs can be assigned a priority override in the case that an automated plate output is happening and you need to release a plate for a scratch or other problem that might have occured on press and needs immediate action. This is the first real step in a true "JDF" workflow or "lights-out prepress". Pre-flight is another story, prepress is baked. Prinect configured with right tools and with the right person behind it's administration can do this and much more right now, today, out of the box. I have yet to see another system so thorough and robust from any other vendor or pairing of other vendors.

 

[marktonk]

Hi John,

All the points mentioned are valid concerns. We try to alleviate them with our Saphira brand consumables. We basically started consumables with CtP plates and proofing paper.We have been gradually adding to our portfolio and now encompass much broader product range, be it inks, fountain solution, blankets, rollers, etc. When we add to our consumable portfolio, we test the combinations together so we then know that this fountain solution works well with this ink and this plate. Testing may lead to different formulation to improve the product. Our goal is to take the guesswork out and keep the production running. We do know that some items are more suited for certain type of work so we may offer several different solutions i.e. we have multiple blankets. We consider this added value to the Saphira brand products.

Regards,

Mark

 

[marktonk]

Ritter,

Thank you for a user perspective.

Here is another example of Prinect flexibility. I have a user in Chicago that has a Suprasetter 105 MCL along with Prepress Manager. The prepress department is a bit of a distance from the pressroom. The Suprasetter is installed in a room next to the press room. The press consoles are equipped with Plate on Demand. Prepress does not output plates, just preps and imposes files. The press operators select the job they need from the press console monitor and enact the imaging of plates. Being an automatic platesetter, the slipsheets are removed, plates are loaded, exposed, punched, processed and end up in the platestacker. The press operator just picks up the plates to bend and hang when needed. All this is accomplished while another job is running on press. This is not lights out but truly Plate on Demand.

Regards,

Mark

 

[gordo]

[SNIP]Corey drives to the heart of the matter, as a fellow printer: get some plates in and test test test. This has not happened yet, which is maybe good given the state of this discussion. Whatever plates show up will be running the ISO 12647/G7 test form.[SNIP]

John, do you mean this test form:

If so, which targets would one use specifically for testing plates. And how does one go about testing and comparing this class of plates?

thx, gordon p
my print blog here: Quality In Print current topic: Custom Halftone Dots

 

[jlind]

Gordon:
The test form looks similar, but not the same, with a healthy dose of ladder targets. Which specific targets are best for looking at plates is, well, beyond my pay grade. No single target, that's for sure. If I were a press operator, my first look will be at how clean the non-image area is, and what water levels I need to be at to keep it clean. (The XL makes this very easy to do.) Same with inking levels to reach target values on the test form. Do you remember plate suppliers that would claim that their plates resulted in better ink mileage?

The real reason for the test form is that the shop is a G7 printer and the plates may not print neutral right out of the box. Does this mean more consulting work for someone every time you change a consumable? Perhaps. Running the test form first will allow some measurements to align prepress and press outputs. THEN the testing would continue on live jobs.

Could the printer send some LAPV plates from a Neutral Test Form run to the various suppliers and have the sample plates show up with the correct neutral curves? Have plate suppliers worked out a procedure for this yet?

I'm still curious about how many test runs other printers might make before a decision to commit to a plate/processor couple. Word has it that this printer worked with Agfa for almost six months during the initial switch to CTP a decade ago. Hopefully it will go smoother than that. After all, for these plates, there isn't any chemistry to stabilize with time and temperature and roller squeeze settings.

What are the experiences of other printers with this flavor of thermal process free plates?

Is it possible to buy one platesetter and then choose between the four (or more in the future) plates?

John Lind
Cranberry Township, PA
724-776-4718

 

[marktonk]

Hi John,

The Suprasetter is an open platform that has over 40 thermal plates certified. I do know the Agfa Azura, the Fuji Ecomaxx T and the Kodak Thermal Direct are certified, I do not know if the Presstek is. Typically their plate is sold with their platesetter but I will look into this. Have a good weekend.

Regards,

Mark

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

The presstek is ablative technology so it's a bit "special" as I understand it. At least that was the situation when we decided not to go down that road.

 

[jlind]

Well then, which road did you go down? Any of these four plates? Why would ablative be a negative, just heat blasting instead of chemical development. What was the real reason you didn't go with Presstek? They were certainly the first. Where is their market share? Is this all about cost per square foot or numbers of feet on the street? Is it reliability or market channels?

John Lind
Cranberry Township, PA
724-776-4718

 

[Santa]

Well then, which road did you go down? Any of these four plates? Why would ablative be a negative, just heat blasting instead of chemical development. What was the real reason you didn't go with Presstek? They were certainly the first. Where is their market share? Is this all about cost per square foot or numbers of feet on the street? Is it reliability or market channels?

John Lind
Cranberry Township, PA
724-776-4718

Hi John,

We spent 9 months with a Dimension and the Anthem Pro plates back in 2005 before switching to the Azura on an Asento.

I do not know what the Aurora plate is or how it is imaged so I can't speak to that. But to answer your specific question :"Why would ablative be a negative, just heat blasting instead of chemical development."
We found that the ablative plates made it extremely difficult to get a consistent tint or solid across the plate.

With the Dimension we were running there were "16 zones" representing roughly a 1 inch vertical swatch from top to bottom of plate. With the ablative technology all lasers are not always firing at the same intensity so what happens is you start to get these one inch vertical bands running through tints. The solution to this was to "zone balance" which meant increasing or reducing laser power in each zone until you "visually" got a plate that did not have the bands. This process was far from perfect and used up a lot of plates.

It was also hard to do consistent reprints because you may have done 20 or 30 zone balances in the 6 months between reprints and your tint values are totally different because you have been driving lasers up and down to get a consistent value.

In a nut shell, you would expect you 50 % tint to at least be consistent from left to right on the plate. With the ablative system we were never able to achieve that.

Again, this was the Dimension Excel Running Anthem plates circa 2005. I have no experience or info on what the Aurora is or does.

Now if you have any questions about Azura or Azura TS those I can answer.

Best,

John "Santa" Santangelo
H&S Graphics
Lodi, NJ

 

[Lukas Engqvist]

Well Santa mentioned most of it, we too went to Azura. Consistency and that the little bitts you blast off need to go somwhere. A sister company had presstek they had lotts of problems relating to "dust".

 

[Glenn]

I've been using Fuji's Ecomax for about a year, currently trying the Kodak Thermal Direct and this week we'll be throwing on Presstek's plate. Downsides to the Kodak and Fuji are the inability to read the plate and possible debris in the ink, fountain solution, rollers, etc. Downside to the Presstek is 25,000 run length, although next generation which is in beta supposedly doubles or triples run length, upside, you can see and read the image on the plate. Fuji's Ecomax supposedly leaves more debris in the press while Kodak's scratch easily. We're using a Fuji Dart/Screen platesetter for all 3.

 

[jlind]

Very interesting, gtas. How long will you test each plate? How will you know that you have found "the one?" Have also heard about the scratching issue with Kodak, aside from the mysterious debris question. Looks like you ran Fuji for a year and now it's time for something "new" or "better." Why? What will you make of the above comment about Presstek ablation debris?

John Lind
Cranberry Township, PA
724-776-4718