Four open CTP plates can not be ignored (on)

According to a recent market strategy analysis report of the printing technology analysis company in the United Kingdom, CTP plates have accounted for 18% of the entire plate market in 2001, and by 2006, it may increase to 40% of the world's demand.

Consumables considerations
Supreme Graphics is a commercial printing company with $5.5 million in assets. It mainly prints four-color brochures, sales point folders and saddle-stitched books. Its Supreme School Supply branch also prints class records and plans for the school administration.

Supreme Graphics's working time is only 8 hours a day on Friday, but in order to meet the different size requirements of the company's 13 printing presses, the company's prepress department often produces more than 100 printing plates each day.

Therefore, the practicality of the printing plate is one of the factors to be taken into consideration when the printing company intends to introduce the CTP. A special committee of fine arts editors, pre-press handlers, production managers and President Chuck Blaschko conducted a joint evaluation of the equipment and finally determined that the use of basysPrint's UV-Setter 57 computer to directly process the traditional equipment and Kodak Polaroid Craftsman plate. The UV-Setter 57 is a computer-based, traditional format machine with a four-sided format that directly images on a conventional analog plate using a UV light source.

“With the visible light system, we are very worried about the lack of suppliers who can provide suitable printing plates. If there are many such devices installed worldwide, then will the plates be out of stock?” said Mr. Blaschko, president of Supreme Graphics.

Blaschko estimates that a visible light system costs about $70,000 more than basysPrint's traditional computer-to-system system, and a thermal system costs about $40,000 more. “The price of the machine itself is not the decisive factor for these three systems. We have all done a print test on it and found almost no difference. The key is the system's consumables – the plate prices of the other two systems are obviously higher. Even heat-treated chemicals cost much more than traditional systems. When using computers to process traditional plates, we don't need to change anything before printing and printing." After installing an Epson 10000 for contract proofing, traditional Blue lines and Matchprint palettes can also be machined.

A year after using Rampage RIP and Preps Pro processing software, Supreme Graphics installed UV-Setter equipment in April. According to Mr. Dan Bjerke, Production Manager, “The CTP was used on the second day of installation. It works well and has been used for a long time.” Now, almost any job at Supreme Graphics uses a plate maker. Processing, in addition to some contract proofs still need to use film.

According to Mr. Bjerke, the use of computer-based traditional plate technology "almost reduced the time for each operation by half or more." After a document passes RIP, it takes about 4 minutes to make a plate. It takes 5 minutes to make a piece of film, and it takes another time to make the plate.

"Our press operators are also very good at accepting new technologies," added Mr. Blaschko. "The press setup time has been reduced by 50% from the original half hour to the current 15 minutes."

No longer need baking version
H&H Printing (Horton & Horton Printing) is a family-owned four-on-one and off-site printing factory. In 1995, the company owned a portion of a plate-making company and did all the prepress work for the printing factory. However, in 2000, the company upgraded. Mr. Brad Horton, the company’s boss and general manager, explained: “We decided to sell this portion of our shares and acquire all the pre-press shares of the other service providers in the town and concentrate on prepress production.” In 2000, the company began to produce its own products. The film and eventually occupied the prepress market.

H&H is a 20-employee, sheet-fed commercial printing house that uses various types of printing presses, including a 40-inch two-color Heidelberger press, a 25-inch four-color Heidelberger press, and a 28-inch printer. Two-color manroland presses, and copiers such as Hamada, Ryobi, and AB Dick. The company opened a branch for copying and four operations.

When H&H evaluated various CTP equipments, they said: “The chemical treatment of the visible light system is very troublesome and the printing plate has poor usability,” says Mr. Horton. The factory finally purchased a Creo's Trendsetter Triumph computer-to-plate system that runs the Prinergy printing process and uses KPG SWORD plates, which do not require preheating and baking.

Mr. Horton said: It's hard to say whether to select a CTP device or choose a plate. Frankly speaking, KPG's sales representatives and Mr. Horton are old friends for a long time. Plus the confidence in the KPG thermal version, they all played an important role in Mr. Horton’s decision.

H&H began installing digital hardware and software on February 4 and it took about three days. Mr. Horton said: In about two weeks, 90% of the company's activities have been made using CTP equipment. “We have a lot of concerns during the conversion, but now we all think that we should use CTP equipment as early as two years ago.” H&H company uses an average of 60 copies a day, and the company works six days a week for 13 hours a day.

In fact, no SWORD plate presentation was performed before H&H installed the entire system. "We have tested the Thermal Gold thermal version of KPG. The test results were not ideal. We also decided not to use that type of plate," the executive explained. “But when SWORD was put into the market, we started to introduce this kind of printing plate. Gold plate also needs to be pre-heated and baked. We neither want nor have space to do it.”

The use of SWORD plates by the H&H printing plant was very good, and another company that had business contacts with H&H had recently started using SWORD plates. “In fact, we sometimes buy plates from other manufacturers that do the business,” Mr. Horton said. “The plates are also working well when printed, but since we started using SWORD, we sometimes sent some plates.” In the past, other manufacturers also liked this SWORD plate."

(to be continued)