Forgive me once again for coming back to the area of computer to plate for this latest article, but it is an area that is showing some interesting changes. In this article, however I will also look at a development that is happening in the digital printing area.

The first item I want to cover is a development in the computer to flexo plate market. Despite what Creo might say, this is a market that is essentially dominated by one company, Esko-Graphics with the Cyrel Digital Imager (CDI) product line. These products have by far the largest market share in the industry, and according to figures (admittedly from Esko-Graphics), around 90% of all digital flexo plates are imaged on the CDI devices. Esko-Graphics owns the high volume market of flexo CtP. One of the limitations of imaging flexo plates, and this applies to plates from all the major suppliers, is that imaging is a two stage process. The first stage is in the CtP imager and this is to image the plate’s mask layer, and the second stage is in the plate developer, where first the plate is exposed to a high-intensity UV light source to image the plate material which is exposed through the mask. This second stage of the process including the plate development takes in excess of 20 minutes. This is in addition to the time taken in the CtP device to expose the mask.

Esko-Graphics has just announced a key development to speed up the process, and to make flexo plate imaging and development almost as fast as offset plate CtP. In this the CDI unit’s laser imaging head has an addition exposure element added to it that simultaneously carries out the second stage of plate imaging using a high-intensity UV light source. This is done while the laser light source is continuing to image the rest of the plate’s mask area. Esko-Graphics state that this eliminates around 15 minutes of processing per plate, and also reduces the risks of plate damage between the two exposure processes. It is stated that Inline UV Main Exposure technology results in a reduction of plate waste.