RoganJosh
Member
Ahoy my fellow printers. I have been reading these forums for a few years now, but until now haven't posted any comments. My print business is at a crossroads, we have been happily printing away with a couple of ryobi type presses (ad Itek and an ABdick) and a xerox to cover our short run colour work. Our current plate system is an aged Xante platemaker 3, which despite it's relatively low quality has served us well for nearly 10 years!
We had a test with a Mitsubishi eco1630 - which produced polyester plates. But the machine was older than my Xante and had some issues with a processor heater, we decided not to purchase the machine - but it made us realise that we really needed to make the leap to proper CTP, in order to achieve clean halftones and decent fit in spot colour work.
I read a few articles on the G&J machine, but felt that it was still quite costly £16,000 here. We have had sample metal plates supplied and they look amazing, but I think we'd prefer to use polyester. Which brough me to VIM Technolgies - I made an online enquirey and received a speedy response from them. They organised some sample plates and DHLed them from Israel - the first batch were a little flawed (ill-defined dot) and when I reported back they immediately sent a replacement batch of FM and AM screened plates on Polyester which had been printed on an Epson 4880 using a Wasatch RIP - the quality matches that of the G&J metal plates (indeed I can get metal plates using the same system from VIM) - I wonder does anyone else out there use a G&J or VIM based system for making plates?
Thanks, I look forward to hearing from anyone who knows of these systems.
We had a test with a Mitsubishi eco1630 - which produced polyester plates. But the machine was older than my Xante and had some issues with a processor heater, we decided not to purchase the machine - but it made us realise that we really needed to make the leap to proper CTP, in order to achieve clean halftones and decent fit in spot colour work.
I read a few articles on the G&J machine, but felt that it was still quite costly £16,000 here. We have had sample metal plates supplied and they look amazing, but I think we'd prefer to use polyester. Which brough me to VIM Technolgies - I made an online enquirey and received a speedy response from them. They organised some sample plates and DHLed them from Israel - the first batch were a little flawed (ill-defined dot) and when I reported back they immediately sent a replacement batch of FM and AM screened plates on Polyester which had been printed on an Epson 4880 using a Wasatch RIP - the quality matches that of the G&J metal plates (indeed I can get metal plates using the same system from VIM) - I wonder does anyone else out there use a G&J or VIM based system for making plates?
Thanks, I look forward to hearing from anyone who knows of these systems.
Last edited:
