ROLLING MEADOWS, Ill. — Atlas Lithograph Co. has fully upgraded its prepress department to an integrated digital workflow centered around Screen technology. The commercial printer located in San Diego, Calif., installed Screen USA PlateRite 8100 thermal platesetter and Trueflow PDF-based workflow management system. "The transition to computer-to-plate was really a matter of timing," said Amber Cary, production manager. "We had been investigating different CTP systems for at least two years, and we felt comfortable that the technology had matured to the point where it provided a reliable solution. Our choice of Screen technology hinged on the fact that Screen is an OEM supplier to leading manufacturers. Product pricing also entered into our decision." Established in 1954, Atlas Lithograph is a family-owned firm with 23 employees. The printer has a loyal base of local and regional customers that include insurance agencies, credit companies and education institutions. Atlas Lithograph's Screen CTP installation produces about 300 plates per month to supply its Heidelberg sheetfed presses up to 40 inches. With a complete range of production capabilities under one roof, Atlas Lithograph is able to suit every type of print work from business cards and stationery to four-color process brochures, catalogs and posters, as well as five-color and six-color jobs. The PlateRite 8100 is the ideal eight-page solution for printers who want to minimize the investment required to move to high-quality CTP. It handles plate sizes ranging from 17.7 inches by 14.5 inches to 45.6 inches by 37 inches at the rate of up to eight plates per hour. The PlateRite 8100 features an external drum design and a 16-channel infrared laser diode imaging head. The exposure head supports resolutions from 2,400 dpi to 2,540 dpi. With Screen's exclusive auto-balance system, no manual adjustments are required for drum balance when switching to different-sized plates. Screen's automatic inline punching system performs punching for press and for platesetter registrations at the same time, immediately before mounting the plate on the drum. Up to eight punch blocks can be mounted and selected according to plate size and press type. In terms of efficiency, capability and flexibility in the prepress arena, Trueflow is a powerful systems-engineered workflow. Trueflow manages and control trapping, imposition, plate generation and CIP3/4 file generation utilizing standard file formats, including TIFF, PDF and PostScript. Before implementing the Screen workflow, Atlas Lithograph had been producing plates from film. Cary states that Atlas Lithograph's biggest gains involve across-the-board improvements in job throughput. With regard to prepress staff productivity, Cary says "since installing Trueflow, the reduction in time required to take a job from preflight all the way to plate has been significant. Trueflow is fast enough to take care of all the jobs in one shift."