Chem-free Process-free Plates Again

[Glenn]

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

Presstek uses a water rinse processor that removes everything before it hits the press. We did have debris from the Fuji's on the rollers, Kodak claims their plate does not, but I'm skeptical. The change from Fuji was not my decision but partly due to the lack of support due to Fuji's downsizing staff. We have enough Kodak plates to test for a month or so. Another drawback to the Kodak plates is they expose at half speed on our Dart, taking our plate production from roughly 21 plates an hour to about 12. That is not an issue with the Fuji or Presstek plates.
I see you're in Cranberry, I'm just down the road in Pittsburgh!

 

[User Name]

J. Wehler, Presstek, Inc. Dealer Channel Manager

J. Wehler, Presstek, Inc. Dealer Channel Manager

I do not speak for Presstek Corporate. I am merely offering my own opinion and some information.

Points of fact : the original question was concerning Aurora Pro. Aurora Pro is considered "sub-ablative". The thermal laser fractures the non-image area, no debris is released in the drum, the debris is removed by the Aquascrubber using brushes and water spray bars, the carbon debris is filtered out of the water by inexpensive filters. Aurora Pro has been certified by Kodak and Screen to run on their platesetters.

Opinion: The Anthem Pro technology used by John Santangelo several years ago was upgraded and electro-grained 3 years ago. Anthem Pro is imaged on Presstek Dimension CTP systems, but may also be imaged on some Kodak CTP systems. I think it would be very helpful to those who read these posts if Mr. Santangelo would try moving on and discuss products he is now dealing with.

 

[Glenn]

I do not speak for Presstek Corporate. I am merely offering my own opinion and some information.

Points of fact : the original question was concerning Aurora Pro. Aurora Pro is considered "sub-ablative". The thermal laser fractures the non-image area, no debris is released in the drum, the debris is removed by the Aquascrubber using brushes and water spray bars, the carbon debris is filtered out of the water by inexpensive filters. Aurora Pro has been certified by Kodak and Screen to run on their platesetters.

Opinion: The Anthem Pro technology used by John Santangelo several years ago was upgraded and electro-grained 3 years ago. Anthem Pro is imaged on Presstek Dimension CTP systems, but may also be imaged on some Kodak CTP systems. I think it would be very helpful to those who read these posts if Mr. Santangelo would try moving on and discuss products he is now dealing with.

I agree with this also. I'm speaking of the Aurora Pro which leaves no debris in the imagesetter. Supposedly, there can be slight residue using the Kodak plates due to the slower drum speed and higher laser intensity, but I'm not sure this is true.

 

[SteveAgfa]

Hello John (Wehler).

Long time no see.

Let's be fair to Santa - as he was answering a direct question from John Lind.
I'm sure he's quite satisfied in discussing his current solution, as he has done
so in numerous previous posts (search "Santa").

See you in September.

Regards,

 

[jlind]

Santa has made a lot of good posts, and he speaks from experience, just not with the Aurora Pro. The post about the Anthem finally brought out a Presstek (unofficial) opinion AND someone trying it out. Clearly things have changed since the Anthem days. We'll be learning more about this option I hope. Well, both options.

John Lind
Cranberry Township, PA
724-7764718

 

[WS@Fujifilm]

John:

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 qualified for the Anicolor system by Heidelberg.

Regards

Dear Steve,
very interesting statement that Heidelberg qualified your Thermofuse plate technology for Anicolor printing system, only.
I guess for you it is easy to show that qualification.

Sorry to say, but I learned this qualification is not existing.

Regards
Wieland

 

[Santa]

I do not speak for Presstek Corporate. I am merely offering my own opinion and some information.



Opinion: The Anthem Pro technology used by John Santangelo several years ago was upgraded and electro-grained 3 years ago. Anthem Pro is imaged on Presstek Dimension CTP systems, but may also be imaged on some Kodak CTP systems. I think it would be very helpful to those who read these posts if Mr. Santangelo would try moving on and discuss products he is now dealing with.

Mr Wehler,

You would do yourself and you company a great service if you were to thoroughly read a post before commenting.

Below is my original quote. The question asked was very specific and I answered it specifically. Stating 2x my lack of any knowledge about the Aurora. What I did answer, using my 9 months of experience, was a specific question by John Lind, which I re-quoted in my post.

Below is my post as it appeared.

"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."

Trust me sir I "moved on" 4 1/2 years ago to the Azura plate along with over 1,000 other printers worldwide.

 

[SteveAgfa]

Hello Weiland (Schwarz).

Thanks for joining us.
For too long your Canadian colleague Tony Karg has been an unofficial voice from Fuji.

Well, here's a case where your European English is more precise than my American style.
There is indeed no document stating this, but my colleagues were informed that the Anicolor
System does not work with on-press processing (or, on-press clean-out) plates. Heidelberg
was also stating this at Drupa, but then again I wasn't there.

[Note - I've since modified my original comment to reflect an endorsement by HDM as a better fit,
due to Azura reinforcing the Anicolor benefit of coming to color within ten sheets.]

Since I can't wave a certificate, perhaps you can post a qualification from Heidelberg for
Ecomaxx with Anicolor, or perhaps someone from Heidelberg can respond, since I can't
speak for them. Perhaps since those initial discussions we had with Heidelberg, you've
made progress with Anicolor systems, and have some updated information to share.

Congratulations however for your first post; we look forward to your participation.

Regards,

 

[SteveAgfa]

Santa:

Once again, you're being too modest. Over 1,000 printers?
You belong to a much larger family of Azura chem-free users.

Azura is now being used by over 2,500 customers world-wide.
(I'm looking for the certificate now.) ;-)

AGFA.com

Regards,

 

[WS@Fujifilm]

Hello Weiland (Schwarz).
Well, here's a case where your European English is more precise than my American style.
There is indeed no document stating this, but my colleagues were informed that the Anicolor System does not work with on-press processing (or, on-press clean-out) plates. Heidelberg was also stating this at Drupa, but then again I wasn't there.

Dear Steve,
Thanks for your quick response.
As a non native speaker I am surpriesed to learn that there is a different in American and British English, when talking about qualifications.


Heidelberg has no evaluation program to qualify any type of plate for their presses. Such a system is established at HD only for their plate-setters and in this case your Azura plate as well as our PRO-T (European name) Ecomaxx are qualified.



It seems that your colleagues informed not sufficiently when saying that DOP plates like our PRO-T would not work with Anicolor - PRO-T works very well.... and at DRUPA I was NOT told by HD that PRO-T would not work.

Anyhow, I hope my answer helps you to get a better understanding about our PRO-T plate and it´s performance, which is by the way the fastest CTP plates and it works without any chemistry

regards

wieland

 

[KevinC@EFI]

Wieland - welcome to the forum! I have enjoyed our in-person discussions over the years in Europe, and look forward to continuing that here.

<snip>
There is indeed no document stating this, but my colleagues were informed that the Anicolor System does not work with on-press processing (or, on-press clean-out) plates. <snip>

Steve - I would like to clarify this "non-qualification" you speak about. The main feature HDM sells the Anicolor press on is it's ability to come up to color in 10 sheets or less. The testing that HDM did at the time took 12-15 sheets to come to full color with Thermal Direct. My understanding (from direct conversations with them) is that is the ONLY reason they made such a statement. We have customers using Thermal Direct perfectly fine with Anicolor presses, and in many cases it's well under 10 sheets startup. I accept that this is slightly more paper than our typical 5-6 sheets on most presses (full density and clean background), but well within reason.

Clarification: the "statement" from HDM I referred to is not a disqualification, but simply the lack of an official qualification of that solution - something Wieland now informs us doesn't seem to exist for Azura either.


Kevin.

 

[SteveAgfa]

Kevin:

Thanks for the clarification, and the confirmation that such a statement was made.
Now I understand the context.

and oh...

<snip>
Steve - I would like to clarify this "non-qualification" you speak about.
<snip>

I'm glad we both speak the same version of English! (smile)

Regards,

 

[Vee]

hmmm....

hmmm....

Competition is fierce! Isn't in?!

Funny thing is Heidelberg is in all the conversations, wether it be prepress software (Signa being arguably the best Impo app ever), Meta (unbelievably rock solid RIP - no one can question that), then there are the color tools (that are amazing, check into the latest color tools they have), CtP (Suparastter is the arguably the most advanced imaging engine), consumables (Agfa and HDM could be an interchangeable name here) press room, again arguably the top dog/best selling presses out there, with the exception of the packaging sector where KBA is pretty well respected. Then post press, were they're pretty well represented again.

Oh yea, and the Prinect system can tie a nice pretty bow around all of it from front to back!
So is there really anyone who can compete with the package that is Prinect?

 

[John OD]

...The main feature HDM sells the Anicolor press on is it's ability to come up to color in 10 sheets or less. The testing that HDM did at the time took 12-15 sheets to come to full color with Thermal Direct. My understanding (from direct conversations with them) is that is the ONLY reason they made such a statement. We have customers using Thermal Direct perfectly fine with Anicolor presses, and in many cases it's well under 10 sheets startup. I accept that this is slightly more paper than our typical 5-6 sheets on most presses (full density and clean background), but well within reason.

Clarification: the "statement" from HDM I referred to is not a disqualification, but simply the lack of an official qualification of that solution - something Wieland now informs us doesn't seem to exist for Azura either.


Kevin.

Hi All -

Just to be clear, the statement from Heidelberg regarding Anicolor is up to color in 20 sheets or less. Most of our Anicolor users will tell you that is is between 10 and 15 for sellable sheets.

As for DOP type plates, we wont tell you that they will not work, they are just not recommended at this time.

Kind regards - John

John O'Donnell
Heidelberg USA
Product Manager Sheetfed / Small Format

 

[gordo]

As for DOP type plates, we wont tell you that they will not work, they are just not recommended at this time.
John O'Donnell Heidelberg USA
Product Manager Sheetfed / Small Format

Why not?

gordon p

 

[SteveAgfa]

Mea culpa.

Thanks to John's (Heidelberg) clarification, rather than using the term "qualified",
I should have said that "Of the Big 3, Azura is the only chem-free/processless
plate recommended for use with the Anicolor System, at this time".

This whole exercise shows how it is the desire of some to move the conversation
away from John Lind's initial intent, to once again an issue of semantics. John asked:

<snip>
Let's have some MORE discussion about these pressing concerns...
<snip>

The naming convention of a plate, or the difference between "qualified" and
"recommended", are not the pressing concerns that John suggests printers are facing.

<snip>
Why is it when he calls the printers that are using the plate now, they imply that they
are moving on to another product?
<snip>

Surely, it doesn't have anything to do with semantics, but rather, practical application.

Mea culpa.

 

[Ritter]

Well Mr. Lind you can be assured the competition is fierce and the CtP arena is quite a competitive marketplace!

 

[jlind]

No more competitive than any other aspect of the printing or graphic communications industry. This is not a time to buy without doing your homework, and the lowest cost is not always the right solution. While we digress a little from the original post, there is a wealth of useful information blogging through cyberspace. Too bad press operators don't have a link to print planet like prepress people, so we could hear from the guys that hang 20 sets of plates in a day, hear from actual users of the products. That hope might be in vain. That's who my humble fingers are typing for, a specific XL105 driver who is hungry to know what plate and plate setter his company should buy next, knowing he won't have any control over it, but determined to influence the decision as much as possible.

To summarize and raise more questions:
1. There are four choices, but it appears that Agfa Azura might be the market leader
2. We haven't wasted much time on whether it's chem free or process-less, that's a dead horse.
3. The platesetter does not have to be the same brand as the plate, since plates or qualified on multiple imaging platforms, it's all about laser power and spot size. And according to Santa, if an array is involved, that the lasers have equal power from one side of the plate to the next.
4. The Prinect System would be an artificial intelligence link between the SupraSetter and the XL105 continuously adjusting the plate curves to maintain a given printing result, such as ISO12647 and Neutral Print Density curves.

Time for a question, based on #4, is this possible, and if it is possible, is the MetaDimension workflow required in PrePress or will it still work with Apogee (current flavor of prepress with the LAPV plate.)

This does not let plate users off the hook to share their experiences running the four plates that started this thread. Any case studies of 40 inch presses using Presstek Aurora, Fuji Ecomaxx, and Kodak Thermal Direct from an operator/owner perspective?

Thanks for everyone's time.

John Lind
Cranberry Township, PA
724-776-4718

 

[Ritter]

I'm sure the vendors will chime in on this but yes you can feed another vendors platesetter you just require another piece of software and a special license on your workflow/RIP. The other piece of software is referred to as a TIFF catcher in Heidelberg's case this product is MetaShooter (it captures TIFFs output from a RIP and sends the data to a prosetter, suprasetter, topsetter, etc.) The special license you require in your workflow is TIFF export from your RIP.

This can be a bad idea sometimes but it can lead you to great flexibility. If problems or questions arise (in calibration, dot, or some other seemingly obtuse thing for example) you are going to have to work between two vendors who don't always like to play nice. The flexibility having a TIFF catcher is that you can use your antiquated equipment, another vendors software or legacy software along side your new equipment. In your case say you purchased an HDM Suprasetter and wanted to keep your Apogee workflow, buying Heidelberg's TIFF catcher MetaShooter to feed the Suprasetter and and TIFF-B export licensing from Agfa would allow you to do this. You could also buy Agfa's TIFF catcher and keep the old output device as a backup or to feed other presses. Another advantage to a TIFF catch output method is that the RIP can be located far from the output device as they are linked by network connection. You must have a stable, reliable and speedy LAN network. I would think 1Gbps LAN should be considered a minimum.

 

[pauljrudman]

Xingraphics Fit Eco -Chemial Free Thermal Plate

Xingraphics Fit Eco -Chemial Free Thermal Plate

The Xingraphics Fit Eco plate is the latest chem free thermal plate to become commercially available and should be included in this plate product comparison/ conversation.

It is the first phase change product on the market (the laser changes the coating to make it ink receptive and the plate coating in the non image area remains on the plate throughout the whole printing process)

It does not use (DOP) Develop On Press technology as used by the Kodak thermal direct and Fuji Pro T so none of the coating contaminates the press during the press start up stage.

No special inks or pressroom chemicals are needed and no rinse or gumming unit is needed after imaging and the xingtraphics Fit Eco also has a visible image after imaging.


This technology is the future and I am sure Kodak,Fuji & Agfa will soon follow this technology in the future.