processless violet plates

[suttonae]

Speaking as a seller of used setters.
I'm waiting for a Violet plate to give a new lease of life for The Heidelberg Prosetter family.

I come up against printers who'd prefer processless because of the perceived reduction in maintenance time of a processor.

Does anyone know which upcoming plate might best suit these Setters?

[Colin Gilham]

If the Prosetter images the LP-NV then it will image the Pro-V. Best speak to Fuji

[suttonae]

In the Prosetter family there are two version of Laser, one 5mw and the other 30mw.
The 30mw will expose Lap V, Does anyone know if the 5mw will expose the new plates due to be annouced / available soon?

[SteveAgfa]

suttonae

Agfa is in process of qualifying our chem-free violet plates with a variety of engine manufacurers.
Until it has been formally released, we can only speak in generalities, as each engine's performance
varies - regardless of raw laser power.

WRT 5mW/30mW - You might have your laser/plate pairings backwards.

Lap-V is super sensitive/high speed. As such - a 5 mW violet laser is sufficient.
However, photopolymer plates are still "fast" - but in a different category. Depending
on the plate and engine, 30mW lasers can image photopolymer, but the 60mW lasers
which came out soon after the 30mW, have much more power latitude. Given ND
filters or apertures, 30 & 60 mW lasers can be stepped-down to image Lap-V.

Agfa's chem-free violet is initially specified at 50µJ/cm2 - which is similar to our
traditional N91V violet photopolymer speed. Basically - as Collin said, if your device
is qualified to image N91V, then most probably it will have enough energy for Agfa's
chem-free violet.

This information is available at:

AGFA.com - Chemistry-free plates

Regards,

[Colin Gilham]

Good to read you Steve...it's been a while!

It's good to see LAP-V is alive and well, after seeing it at a very tightly controlled demo at IPEX a few years back it appeared to die a death. I'd heard Agfa were struggling with it in terms of stability and that they could only achieve 2-98%.

What is the plan for LAP-V - is it aimed at the commercial market rather than newspapers?

[SteveAgfa]

Hi Colin:

I believe we're confusing product names.

Lap-V is our violet version of LithoStar - our silver-based plate -
launched as violet at Drupa 2000. It started the violet revolution.

N92 VCF is our chem-free violet photopolymer plate aimed at our
large installed base of newspaper photopolymer installations.
It is being rolled out now in controlled sales. You saw this at Ipex.

It's commercial application - Azura -V - will be rolled out once
we complete our efforts with the roll-out of N92 VCF. With Agfa,
we have a huge install base of photopolymer in the newspaper
market, and less so with commercial, as that's where our customers
often chose silver over photopolymer. This helps guide our priorities.

Regards,

[Colin Gilham]

Thanks for clearing the coinfusion up. It makes more sense now.

is Azura-V silver or polymer based, and what's the post imaging process? And what's the intended release date?

As my lack of knowledge suggests it's been very quiet over here on that front, is it intended to roll the plate out worldwide in one go or in one particular area to start?

[SteveAgfa]

Colin:

Azura-V is similar technology to N92 VCF, and has a similar post imaging clean-out.
Check with your local Agfa representative for roll-out plans in your locale. Yet, our
first focus is thorough implementation of N92 VCF before we shift efforts to Azura-V.

Regards,

[mac310]

As far as I know there are 2 almost process free plates out there, Fuji Ecomax and Kodak Thermal Direct. All others still require a processor. I have tried both and have been successful in getting them both to work. In my honest opinion Kodak was the easiest to work with on press, but the speed you have to burn those plates at will bring any short run printer to a halt. Fuji Ecomax is the way to go unless you are a long run printer.

As far as I know both Kodak TD and Fuji Ecomaxx/ProT are not processless and requires processor. In fact this processor is called "printing press" in that CtP systems or in other way printing press is used as processor. This is a reason to call that kind of plates not processless but DoP (developed on press).