Citrus Heights, CA – March 15, 2006 – RIPit Imaging Systems announces the successful installation of its SpeedSetter VM CtP system with OpenRIP workflow at De Haes Printing in Belgium. Exclusively distributed in Belgium by S.D. Graphics are RIPit's SpeedSetter violet laser metal CtP systems for 2-up and 4-up formats (B3 & B2). The machines are compact, user friendly and produce plates using the powerful and Seybold award-winning [1] OpenRIP workflow system. The SpeedSetter VM is a simple-to-use, easy-to-service and reliable system, and is compatible with all common 2-up portrait and landscape presses on the market. The SpeedSetter VM is capable of imaging all violet plates available on the market today, and the optional plate processor can process all the available photopolymer plates. The SpeedSetter VM is part of a complete turnkey CtP system, which includes industry-leading OpenRIP Symphony Workflow with Adobe PostScript 3. De Haes Printing is the one of the latest printers to report that RIPit's SpeedSetter VM is an affordable, high quality CtP solution proving integral to its success. Established in a beautiful old building in the heart of the town, the De Haes Printing Company employs four people including manager Winfried Van Overbeke and his wife Gerd De Haes. Quality is the company's uppermost priority, as evidenced by the many quality awards on display in the reception area, and which demonstrate that De Haes has, on more than one occasion, won first prize in printing competitions. In terms of presses, De Haes has a 4-color Ryobi 3304 and a two-color GTO. Like many of his colleagues, Winfried Van Overbeke felt that it was time to move to CtP. “Plate-setting by film takes too much time. Annually we produce 4600 plates and I've calculated that, if the CtP could save 5 minutes per plate, I would recover 380 man hours each year. That's no insignificant amount! And as a matter of fact I actually save much more than just 5 minutes per plate,” says Van Overbeke. Van Overbeke continues, “Before making the technology decision, our advisor examined very closely many proposals and solutions from different manufacturers. Very often costs posed a problem, or we weren't convinced of the quality on press.” In the end Mr. Van Overbeke discovered, thanks to S.D. Graphics, the RIPit system and more precisely the SpeedSetter VM for B3 formats up to the Speedmaster 52. Winfried Van Overbeke describes the machine as an ideal device for meeting the needs of the full range of printing he takes on. “In short, it's the quality and stability of metal CtP at an affordable price, which makes it profitable even for those companies processing a limited number of plates.” An Innovative Concept Compact The SpeedSetter VM and its associated P-20 offline plate processor occupy a yellow light room of only 5.25 square meters / 56 square feet. The compactness of the system is one of its major advantages, in the eyes of Van Overbeke: "An excess of space is a luxury that only industrial printers have." Highly stable; no vibration… Furthermore, he explains that the advantage of the structure of the internal drum of the SpeedSetter VM is that the plate remains stationary and isn't subject to vibrations. The only moving parts of the machine are the spinning mirror that reflects the laser beam to the plate and the linear motor that moves the laser beam along the drum. Longer laser life than thermal… The laser source is a powerful 60 mw violet diode that is cheaper and has a longer life than thermal lasers. It gives a constant resolution of 2540 dpi that is more than enough when you work with 150 to 200 lpi, like at De Haes. Loading and unloading of the plates is manual but very quick, thanks to a simple but innovative concept for registration which eliminates errors. Explains Van Overbeke: "The SpeedSetter VM doesn't use classic registration, with 3 points that needs a lot of precision from the operator, to avoid problems due to incorrect registration, but a system of 2 registration contacts combined with an electronic eye. At the exact moment the plate touches the 2 contacts, the vacuum system is activated. The only task the operator must do is to watch that the lateral margin of the plate stays on top of the electronic eye. The eye registers automatically the plate's left side position and consequently its starting imaging point. "Thanks to this system, the SpeedSetter VM produces with ease 19 B3 plates per hour. A similar 4-up system, the SpeedSetter VM 4 has recently been introduced. The OpenRIP Symphony program, included with the machine, constitutes another plus to the RIPit solution. It's a powerful system based on the Adobe CPSI core that is always compatible with the newest PDF formats. Its many functions cannot be explained in a few words, but it is enough to say that this program was No. 1 in the Seybold Publishing PDF Shootout in 2003.” High-end RIP Features Come Standard… Van Overbeke appreciates the numerous advanced features incorporated as standard in the OpenRIP Symphony workflow. “For example, quickly imposing a series of visiting cards on the B3 printing area and the possibility to automatically calculate the ink consumption or conserving data under CIP3 files for automatic press setting permits one to save a lot of time,” he says.