Gv, you do understand that I mean 4 trading days, don't you?
I may have come across and interesting article by Seybold. It talks about flatbed thermal platesetters. I believe that the new 4th gen. diode laser developed by PRST will meet the requirements to make a flatbed platesetter much easier to produce and thus to sell. Its the distance to the plate after and during when the laser direction is changed through lenses and or mirrors. The new laser may be able to change direction without the focus problems associated now. Hmmmm.
<<Some technologies. What we have, first of all, is the flat-bed technology. On the slide, you can see how a typical flat-bed imaging device works, such as capstan imagesetters, flat-bed CTP systems, etc. Flat-bed can work in various ways, but the majority of flat-bed devices work by focusing a laser on a deflection system, which can be a spinning mirror, a galvanometer, a hologram or a prism. That deflects the beam in a horizontal direction across a flat surface, such as the plate. To do so, it has to go through a lens, which assures that the spot shape is the same across the whole width of the plate. That's a complex requirement, because the distance and the angle at which the beam hits the plate at the edge is different than from the center.
The complexity of flat-bed imaging is finding a lens that will give you the same spot shape across the whole width of the material. Generally, it has been very difficult to make a flat-bed work across more than about 18 inches. Now, there's been some developments since that time. There are flat-bed systems that go to about 22 or even 24 inches, but the majority of flat-beds were restricted to this 18 or so inches in terms of width. So they have been initially targeted mainly at newspapers where 18 inches is wide enough. Most newspapers in the U.S. can be imaged in 14 1/2 inches or less. Most newspapers in Europe and the rest of the world can be imaged in 16 1/2 inches. It's fine for that sort of marketplace, or for small-format, medium-format four-page CTP, where 18 inches in width will give you the width of two 11 x 8 1/2-inch pages, with the necessary trims, gutters, etc. What we found is that there are many benefits to flat-bed, in terms of plate-handling, because there is no plate moving around inside or outside a drum. You can move a plate very quickly in a flat format. People would like to work flatbed if they could.>>
Good luck to each and all
SG |
