In the existing production environment, any equipment, material, or machine is not intact. CTP has been popularized today. The CTP plate used by it has not yet reached the level of performance and handy use of the conventional PS plate. It is necessary to explore its causes as soon as possible to find out the answer. Towards this end, at the end of last year, five companies including Kodak Polychrome Graphics, Toray, Agfa Geveart, Fuji Photo Film, and Mitsubishi Chemical discussed the technical aspects of CTP media, such as usage and efficiency. The views and trends are discussed below.
The popularity of CTP If the CTP ratio is based on the percentage of square meters of CTP plates, the CTP plate has reached two digits. Compared with the introduction of CTP in the early stages, it has made considerable progress and users have been consulted. As a result, about 8-90% of users think that using CTP can shorten the time, improve quality, save on external processing costs, and recognize the benefits of the introduction. In the future, it will be difficult to implement CTP for conventional production lines that are below or full, and there are still quite a few users who cannot do digitalization. For this part of the user class, it is not the same as whether or not to absorb aluminum CTP.
The recent introduction of CTP seems to have lessened the need for technical intelligence. Most business operators have realized that a reliable means of reducing costs is to absorb CTP, so CTP will certainly continue to develop.
Thermal Plate Thermal Plate has two types of preheating and no preheating. Preheating before development can improve the durability and stability of the plate. If you do not make the plate after baking, it is still more resistant to negative plate. Indian force. Many companies have improved their positive-type performance without preheating, but they have not yet formed a negative-characteristic feature in their resistance to printing forces. However, the positive-type outer cylinder retainer has many ways to cover the short sides of the printing plate during exposure, and this part still leaves the problem of drying marks.
Anhydrous CTP plates are, in principle, waterless, and the non-image areas must be free from staining and completely repel ink. The silicone used for this purpose is indeed a very porous sponge. In the job, when the ink roller rolls on the plate, the solvent in the ink is applied to the silicon and a certain degree of printing pressure is applied. This solvent forms a thin film on the silicon surface, thereby repelling the ink. This is its principle.
Toray's anhydrous CTP is only used for water development, so there is no development of waste liquid, no waste disposal, which is very favorable for the corresponding environmental protection, so the user's attention. With its developer, it does not use 5 cents per square meter.
Corresponding to UV ink CTP plate material Although the resistance to UV ink solvent is weak, but ink manufacturers call it a mixed ink, it is composed of UV ink and oxidative polymerization solvent, once the mixed ink, the original UV ink The plate cleaners and various chemicals used do not need to be reused.
Violet CTP Plate When UV laser setters are available, can CTP be more suitable? This expectation has been seen at the Drupa exhibition when Agfa was at the top of the realization of the silver salt type UV CTP plate, but when the UV laser appears, it is thought that it will be cheaper, because the laser is for civilian DVD laser, so only It will be cheaper. Actually, it is more like a printer than a printer.
From the viewpoint of media, there is no change in the use of ultraviolet light, and the use of silver salt or photosensitive resin in principle does not change. At the Drupa show there was a higher-sensitivity photosensitive resin, 5 milliwatts can also be sunburned, and also used 30 milliwatts drying out products. However, there was no case where the price of the plate was reduced due to the use of ultraviolet light.
So, where can the cost be straightened? I am afraid that this part of the laser is used. The expectation of ultraviolet laser or ultraviolet CTP is that the maintenance cost of the laser of the setter is much lower than the tens of watts of the thermal plate. This is not only ultraviolet light, but it can also be used for the same understanding of the current visible light.
With the use of developer-based solutions, due to the deterioration of CO2, whether thermal or photosensitive optical resins are used, it is simply because a class of developer is used. In principle, CO2 is absorbed and the amount of replenishment is increased. According to the efforts of users, Setting up the installation site of the CTP self-imprinting machine in a place with smooth ventilation can directly reduce the amount of supplements.
The next step in the development direction of CTP is that the heat-sensitive technology is quite diverse, and it is possible to expand it into something that does not require processing. The biggest reason why many companies use heat-sensitive technology is to take into account future-oriented technological diversity, one of which is unprocessed, unprocessed plates. Not only is the output on the DI machine, but it is also a very promising market for offline use. It is estimated that the user's demand is not small. The maintenance of the automatic developing machine is always felt as a burden. Based on this, it is of great significance to develop it. Regarding the non-processing, in the present case, the case of using water is because almost all of the non-image portions do not utilize aluminum abrasive grains because of the limited technical capabilities at this point. Nowadays, printing presses are mostly high-speed, and they pay great attention to the water retention of water. In development, most of them are based on the fact that the hydrophilic layer not only considers aluminum sand, but also uses a variety of hydrophilic polymers. substance.
For non-processed photosensitive materials, from another technical point of view, the method of providing a heat-generating layer on the lower layer to volatilize the hydrophilic layer on the upper layer is a low-energy method or is used to make it eroded. To be simple, to deal with this approach is to annihilate the entire layer, or what means to use it to soften it and make it disappear after being exposed, which is very difficult in terms of energy consumption. In addition, there are various residual substances left on the sand, or residues that are not completely evaporated, and things that cannot be peeled off during printing. In short, it is very difficult to expose sand spots. This may be the most difficult technical task to achieve untreated land.
From another point of view, especially in aluminum-based occasions, as another means of the future, aluminum is the most expensive material in the plate. It can be said that it is equivalent to allowing users to buy aluminum in large quantities. Overstated. Then think of aluminum recycling, or, like Manroland's DICO web, putting sensitized materials on top of it once it is erased and used for printing. This is very likely to be done in the future. consider. (Ding Yi) ("Graphic Arts")