Roslyn Heights, NY – 06/10/02 -- Citiplate recently announced that Escher-Grad Technologies, Inc. of Montreal, Quebec, Canada is now accepting orders in its behalf for the first of a new family of Citiplate AQUA LHP platesetters: a combination violet-and-UV internal drum platesetter called the “AQUA LHP UV CTP platesetter, Escher-Grad-edition.” The combination unit is capable of imaging either violet consumables (using a built-in violet laser diode source), or high-speed, UV-sensitive AQUA LHP plates, using a built-in UV laser source. The combination unit is being contract-manufactured by Escher-Grad for Citiplate on the same internal drum platform used in the Escher-Grad Cobalt platesetter, which images silver plates with a 5 mw or 30 mw, 405 nm violet laser diode source. An Escher-Grad UV-option adds a 1,000+ mw UV laser source and optical system, enabling CTP using Citiplate highspeed, UV-sensitive, silverless AQUA LHP plates. The new platesetter family will include combination platesetters of up to 80 inches in size. Citiplate principal Charles S. Cusumano Jr. notes, “Escher-Grad is the first platesetter manufacturer on the market to offer a UV-option upgrade for its internal drum violet platesetter designs. As a result, UV CTP imaging with our high-speed AQUA LHP plates is now immediately available to Escher-Grad customers worldwide, bringing substantial CTP consumables cost-savings, compared to use of silver-based, YAG and thermal plate types. The technology combination of internal drum imaging, plus high-speed UV plates from Citiplate is particularly attractive for high-volume plate customers looking for optimum CTP speed and performance at more conventional plate prices.” Citiplate’s versatile, high-speed AQUA LHP consumables are sensitive in the 360 380 nm imaging range and are designed to work equally well in CTP or film-based platemaking, delivering 1-99% dot (2,540 dpi resolution) and run lengths to 2-million (and more) impressions. These high-speed plates require as little as 1% the UV energy dose needed to expose an ordinary (“conventional”) UV-sensitive plate, allowing the UV laser in the AQUA LHP platesetter to be operated well-below the full power level for very long life. In the platesetter, A 40” AQUA LHP silverless plate images to 1,270 dpi resolution in less than 2 minutes, and to 2,540 dpi resolution in a little over 3 minutes. Najeeb Khalid, CEO of Escher-Grad notes, “We are proud to be first with a UV-option combination internal drum platesetter for imaging Citiplate’s high-speed UV plate media. Escher-Grad was early to recognize the CTP imaging speed and resolution of Citiplate AQUA LHP plates and the outstanding UV CTP performance and economies that UV laser platesetting technology and high-speed UV plate technologies make possible.”