Plates Blinding?

[Prepper]

I posted this in the CTP forum and got 0 response, maybe it was in the wrong place? I'll try it here...

We recently installed a new Screen 6600 platesetter and have been trying to make the Fuji Ecomaxx-T plates work in our shop. The problems began as blinding in the cyan unit only any time they stopped for anything, upon starting back up most of the time the highlight dots would disappear and streaks would show up across the plate where you could see they had wiped the plate with something. It has now progressed on to other units as well, as many as all four one time, and only once has cleaning the plates up as good as we can worked, otherwise we've had to re-image new plates. We are using the plate cleaner we were given and now are using their fountain solution and sub. We've told the pressmen to clean with the cleaner, rinse and then gum (UPC), then we tried only gumming with Fuji gum we used to use in our conventional plate processor and we still have blinding.

Anyone else have this problem or know of any certain solutions to try? The best luck we've had with restarts is to just leave the plates with ink on them and not touch them during short stops or lunches but this probably isn't a good overnight practice huh? Although they did do that once for a test and they started back up the next day pretty good.

Thanks,
Terry

 

[povertycow]

What kind of press is it? The blinding happens after how many impressions? What is the fountain solution that you are now running? Is your water R/O treated for your fountain solution? The rollers may need a good cleaning with a non water misable wash. Water misable washes can leave residue in the rollers that can cause blinding.

 

[nhprinter]

Hi Terry,

We've had the same problem with the Fuji plates. We found the problem ended up being in the processor, but since your plate is a processor-less plate that can't be the problem. I DO believe that fuji changed something in their coatings recently though because we ran this plate for months without any problems and all of a sudden they became VERY sensitive. Just as you said we could even wipe them down or you could see the streaks and we had blind spots.

Call Fuji. I'm sure they can help you out. It's definitely a plate problem not a press problem.


Dave

 

[Prepper]

Plates blinding

Plates blinding

Its a Speedmaster 72 with alcolor, we were using a Prisco solution, switched to what Fuji recommended last Monday, no problems while they were here, blinding again the next day on 3 plates, 1 each the next 2 days. We did a roller wash for calcium 2 times while they were here also.

Found out this afternoon that pressman is putting our FN-S Fuji gum on plates undiluted instead of 50-50 like we told him. Will dilute and see what happens. The plates left over the weekend only blinded on 1 of the 6 and I saw streaks on them this morning that smeared when I wiped across it lightly with my finger. Maybe this will be the final fix for this problem. They were cleaning the plates with a cleaner Fuji gave us, then going over with a universal gum cleaner (purple stuff) so we cut out the universal and tried just the gum but didn't know they were using it straight.

We'll see....