Chicago, Sorry for any tone issues you percieved but we have gone over this before. ALL ALL ALL thermal ablation wet plates need air handeling to be imaged on a platesetter or on press. Lasers burning/imaging the emulsion always create smoke/debris. Yes it is a drop in plate for ALL ALL wet presses in the market today. Period. ALL presses can run that Anthem plate. The question is what platesetters can image it. Many can and most will soon.
This article from the mentioned Seybold report could help "clear" the air.
databases.seyboldreport.com ml&-lay=detail&-sortfield=Company&select=bw&Company=presstek&Submit=Search&-reci d=32826&-find=
Our take on what they are doing at Drupa:
Presstek pioneered the concept of on-press platemaking, and has steadily improved its technology's speed, plate life and laser durability. At Drupa, it will show a new plate, platesetter and CTP laser array. It will also launch two new DI presses. Altogether, Presstek will appear on 20 stands at the show, including Adast, Akiyama, DuPont, Flint Ink, Heidelberg, Imation, Kammann, Karat, KBA, Nilpeter, OMSO, Sakurai, Typon and Xerox. (Some names will not be disclosed until the show opens.)
The new plate, named Anthem, is designed for thermal ablation platesetters with lasers in the 800-1,200nm range. (Creo platesetters can expose it, for example.) The substrate is grained aluminum covered with a hydrophilic seal-coat plus an oleophilic top layer. The top layer is blasted away by the laser to expose the non-ink areas. The ablated gunk from the top layer is then washed off in water; the plate needs no chemical developing, baking or gumming. Rated life is 100,000 impressions.
The new Presstek platesetter, Dimension400, can burn Anthem, PearlDry or other thermal plates up to 27x31 inches or 580x626mm. A magnetic clamping system allows use with plates of arbitrary size, down to 10x10 inches or 240x240mm. A complete 2,540-dpi exposure takes about 3 minutes. It is based on the ProFire laser array, combining a FireWire 400-Mbps data link and stackable clusters of four-diode lasers. Besides its use in the platesetter, it can be used in a wide range of DI press configurations. Diode power and array width can be specified by each OEM.
One of these new DI presses, Sakurai's Oliver-474, adds a new partner for Presstek. The 29-inch press, available in four- to six-color configurations, is highly automated with built-in plate changers, ink-key presets and CIP3 controller. (See Sakurai for more details.)
The other new press, developed with Xerox and Adast, is the PAX DI, a two-up press designed for fast makeready: a flat 10 minutes from the end of one job to color-OK on the next job. (See Adast for details.) The time includes the on-press plate exposure, ink-key settings and water balance. |
