Seeing the "True Faces" of CTcP from the Practical Application of Printing House

In recent years, in the development trend of CTP, many industry insiders predict that in the very long period of time in the future, the situation of the coexistence of thermal CTP, violet laser CTP, and CTcP using traditional media will be formed. There are more and more printers installing CTcP abroad and domestically. This article will introduce the experience of the successful use of Bessie's CTcP at a Bonifatius printing plant in Germany.

Centennial Factory Using CTcP

The Bonifatius printing factory was founded in 1869 and mainly printed information about the church; in the following 136 years, this old printing factory kept up with the trend of the times and constantly updated its technology and equipment. There are now two Manroland 700s, a Heidelberg Web-16, an SM 52 and a SM 102-2 in its printing shop. Two years ago, a manroland 50 was added. In terms of digital printing, there are three Xerox DocuTech 6180s, the postpress department has three Stahl folding machines, and one MBO's new T800; there are two martini collating machines and one martini interposer .

Since August 2000, the Bonifatius printing plant has been converting from film-based production to CTP production within one year. Although still accepting film and hard copy, the body text of the magazine is almost entirely digital, half is provided on CD-ROM, and the other half is transmitted via FTP server or E-mail. The Bonifatius printer first preflights digital files; editing PDF or Postscript files when needed. The Bonifatius printing plant has 10 Macintosh workstations for document processing, and is assembled on the Signastations workstation. A Epson inkjet printer produces digital proofs. After obtaining the customer's approval, generate a TIFF file for the official platemaking.

In early 2005, the Bonifatius printing plant installed the new Odystar workflow system and the workflow was highly automated. The Odystar Workflow System uses PDF 1.5 as the native file format, and JDF as the job ticket format; this avoids errors that could easily occur when converting Postscript files in previous workflows. The new workflow provides a safer and faster process. Job Streaming also applies Webway tools that allow users to upload PDFs or other files to a specific folder or to Odystar's preflight process. The pre-check process includes checking the image resolution, color space, whether the word is missing, body size and related rules.

Since August 2000, Bonifatius has used Bessie's UV-Setter 710-HS to make plates. The UV-Setter 710-HS has two imaging heads that are exposed in different areas of the plate and can produce eight 70 cm x 100 cm format plates per hour. Runs 3 shifts a day and outputs a total of 220 plates. Currently it can image 27,000 square meters of plates each year. With the latest “Scrolling Exposure” technology from Beth Printing, productivity can also be increased, producing 18 plates per hour.

The Bonifatius printing plant has 115 employees and annual sales of 19 million euros. In recent years, it has not escaped the fate of the economic downturn; advertising printing business is not much, printing volume is also small, and price pressures have increased. So saving money is the key.

Traditional plate has its own characteristics

CTcP using traditional media has many important advantages over CTP using digital media. Some small and medium-sized printing companies, especially those with more prints, use more CTcP. As early as two or three years ago, some printers estimated that the total annual cost of using CT India's CTcP system is less than the total cost of using a set of other visible light CTP systems, which is less than 50,000-70,000 US dollars; The total cost of the thermal CTP system is also less than tens of thousands of dollars. In addition to the substantial savings on the plate, the CTcP system eliminates the need to change any production conditions in the prepress or press shop. Existing production equipment using traditional plates can still operate as usual. The Bonifatius printing plant is no exception.

The Bonifatius printing plant uses Kodak's Winner Gold media, which is characterized by its long-term availability (up to 600,000 impressions) and without baking, which can avoid or reduce the cost of baking.

The UV-Setter 710-HS images on a negative plate, while the negative plate developer does not produce deposits in the developer tank, which means that only 4 thorough cleanings are needed per year and costs only €2922; plus weekly Routine cleaning costs a total of 5222 euros for the entire year's cleaning fee. This is a small fee compared to the annual output of 27,000 square meters.

The Bonifatius printing plant often accepts a lot of advertising film. In order to avoid re-digitizing these films in the production of CTP plates, the Bonifatius printing plant uses a vacuum printing machine to simply place the received film on the output of the UV-Setter CTcP. Make a combination of imposition and exposure on the plate. This clever solution has actually been successfully used for many years. Because Bessie's CTcP system uses traditional plates, it has solved the problem of exposing digital plates and traditional plates in combination.

Success experience refutes misunderstanding

Misunderstanding 1: CTcP must use more sensitive traditional media

The fact that Best India's new CTcP system, the UV-Setter 744, can produce 18 plates per hour shows that it is incorrect to use high-sensitivity plates on UV-Setters to achieve high production volumes.

Misunderstanding 2: The traditional negative edition will be phased out

Another misconception is that the traditional negative image plate will soon be no longer produced, because the traditional negative plate material is replaced by the CTP digital plate material. In fact, CTP was only used for formal production in 1997, and its market share has gradually increased. Today, two-thirds of the world's plate market is still dominated by traditional plates, and UV-Setter CTcP can be imaged on any negative or positive plate material that is popular today. On the other hand, the low prices of traditional negative-tone plates do bring great benefits to printing houses. The printer only needs to purchase Kodak Winner Gold at a price of about 5 euros per square meter, which is much lower than the price of CTP digital media.

Myth three: UV-Setter printing quality is not

CTcP's platemaking accuracy is not high enough. For this reason, Beisi India has commissioned experts from Fogra (German Print Research Association) to conduct evaluations. Experts believe that this resolution can obtain 60 to 80 lines/cm of screen wires and achieve good output quality. . In addition, the Bonifatius printing factory also tested the CTPs of all the major other manufacturers and compared the quality with the CTcP of Beth Prints. The conclusion is that the imaging quality of CTcP that they have used for 4 years is as good as the imaging quality of any other manufacturer's CTP.

In addition, Bonifatius's experience also quelled the debate about whether "UV light sources are too expensive." The light source has a working life of 600 hours, and the price of each UV lamp is 385 euros, which is changed every 5 weeks. Including the necessary recalibration work, the replacement process takes approximately 3 hours. In this way, the Bonifatius printing plant invests less than 10,000 euros a year in replacing UV light sources. Moreover, the working life of the UV light source used in the new UV-Setterc CTcP has been increased to 2000 hours.

In this way, it is not difficult to understand why the Bonfatius printing plant decided to order a new CTcP, the UV-Setter 744. The UV-Setter 744 also has two imaging heads, but uses Bass India's DSI2 "reel-exposure" technology for continuous imaging. This patented technology enables its productivity to reach 18 plates per hour. The Bonifatius printing plant selected its semi-automatic model and used manual printing, but the printing plate was automatically sent to the plate developer after imaging.



Source: Digital Printing