CTP - Development of Technology in Progress

In the course of 10 years of development, CTP technology itself has been continuously innovating and transforming. With the advancement of plate and laser technology, the competition in the CTP market has also undergone major changes. From the beginning of the heat-sensitive technology to today's trend, to the purple laser and its rivals, what does this technological change mean?

In 1999, after the introduction of thermal CTP technology in the Liaoning Fine Arts Printing Plant, the Northeast CTP market was silent for six years. In 2005, the Shenyang Shinkansen, a commercial short-run printing private enterprise with a distinctively distinctive competitive advantage, chose the violet laser CTP technology.

In simple terms, compared with the thermal CTP technology, the obvious technical advantages of the violet laser CTP are: low maintenance cost of the laser, reliable equipment stability, unparalleled publishing speed, stable developing environment and the lowest developer cost.

First, high-precision imaging quality

The innate laser property of the 405nm violet laser is that the spot size can be controlled to 1μm. The physical characteristics of the purple laser CTP to ensure a good image quality, with high-precision inner drum structure and photopolymerization violet laser CTP plate, the user can calmly deal with 300lpi AM screening and 20μm FM screening accuracy requirements, It fully meets the desire of printing companies for improving the quality of plate making. Moreover, the good news is that the photopolymerization violet laser CTP plate has been fully domesticated in 2004. Now Fuji XING Beijing Yanjiao Plate Factory and Agfa's Wuxi Plate Factory have both built CTP plate production lines in China and have made it available to domestic customers. Provides sales of photopolymerized violet laser CTP plates.

From the device structure, the inner drum imaging structure itself is superior to the external drum spiral imaging principle in terms of imaging principle, and provides users with higher accuracy in the reproduction of flat screens and extremely thin lines. Shenzhen China Business Security Printing Company Purple Laser CTP has fully verified this point in the production of security and anti-counterfeiting jobs.

Second, the low cost of laser use

As we all know, the 405nm violet laser has a short wavelength and belongs to a cold light source. The stability of the light source is better, and it is suitable for lasers for photopolymerization violet laser plate exposure imaging. The power is only 30～60mW, which is only one thousandth of the power of the thermal CTP laser. Such a small laser power can completely ensure that the laser of the violet laser CTP can be switched instantaneously—the laser is turned on only when the plate is exposed. At other times the laser is completely off. Therefore, theoretically, there is no need to replace the laser at all in the 8-10 year life cycle of the violet laser CTP equipment. Compared to the thermal CTP high-power lasers, only the laser one, the purple laser CTP will save companies a very considerable cost per year of laser replacement costs. Without the high maintenance cost of lasers, the company has eliminated the worries of enterprises. Users can now boldly adopt CTP technology without worrying about the uncontrollable cost of equipment.

Third, reliable equipment stability

During the 8-10 year life cycle of the equipment, the violet laser CTP will save users the costly replacement of multiple lasers, thus ensuring long-term reliable and stable operation of the equipment. Moreover, since the sensitivity of the photopolymerized violet laser CTP plate is only several tens of microjoules per square centimeter, the violet laser CTP will have a very constant production efficiency in the period of 8 to 10 years of the equipment. In the use of thermal CTP, the publishing efficiency of the device will gradually decrease with the attenuation of the laser power.

In addition, the application of the mature and stable inner drum type mechanical structure on the CTP equipment is the icing on the violet laser technology. The technicians who are familiar with the traditional plate-making equipment photo-composing machine all know that the internal drum-type technology has proved its stability and reliability in the production and application practice of the imagesetter for more than ten years. We can see in many companies that the internal drum photo machine that has been in use for nearly 10 years is still producing the exact output of the job. The internal drum type mechanical structure is stationary during the imaging process, making the stability of the equipment obtain long-term and effective guarantee, and avoiding the frequent occurrence of the card version, flying plate and spiral type of the external drum thermal CTP. The phenomenon of unevenness in the flat screen caused by the imaging and the accuracy of the plate-making imaging are further guaranteed.

Fourth, unparalleled publishing speed

The actual publishing speed of the equipment in production is another major advantage of the violet laser CTP. The successful application of Fuji's "Multi-laser AOD" imaging technology on the violet laser CTP significantly increased the publishing speed of CTP equipment. The publishing capacity of 40 sheets of commercial precision half-size plates per hour is about 3 times that of ordinary thermal CTP devices. It is no longer a dream for a printing company to prepare an on-machine version in 6 minutes. For emergencies and shipments, there is a better way to deal with it - this is something that all thermal CTPs cannot match.

A Fuji Photovoltaic Condenser Violet Laser CTP can easily meet the needs of the enterprise back-end 8-10 four-color offset printing presses, thus achieving the best matching between the number of CTP devices owned and the printing production capacity.

Fifth, a stable development environment and the lowest developer cost
The unique grain structure and coating process of the photopolymer plate greatly prolong the life cycle of the developer. In all the CTP plate processing chemicals, the liquid tolerance of the violet laser photopolymer plate is undoubtedly the largest. The developer can be replaced in about two and a half months, which will save the user a lot of flushing costs relative to the replacement period of 7 to 10 days for all thermal CTP plates. The cost of the thermal plate processing costs about 5 yuan, while the photopolymerization violet laser plate costs only 2 yuan. If the user uses more than 3500 square meters per month, and the cost is only one, the violet laser photopolymerization technology will save more than 100,000 washing costs per year in comparison with thermal sensing.

The user application of the photopolymerized violet laser CTP that has already been put into production has also verified this. At present, the developer replacement cycle of photopolymerization violet laser CTP users is about two and a half months. There are many users who have used thermal CTP. Compared to the previous application of thermal sensors, users generally responded that photopolymerization violet lasers have brought about a large amount of flushing cost savings.

The long replacement time of the developer not only brings great cost savings to the user, but at the same time, since the replacement period of the chemical solution is as long as two months or more, the process stability is greatly improved, and the labor intensity of the operator is greatly reduced.

One of the users of Fuji Violet CTP equipment, Shanghai Zhonghua Printing Co., Ltd., is a printing company with three years of experience in the successful application of thermal CTP. In 2005, the company purchased the violet laser CTP. The company's chief of equipment, Mr. Yuan Wenchao, said: "You have to recognize technological progress. The CTP technology itself is also progressing. We chose the heat-sensitive year because heat was the best technology at the time. We now use violet lasers. With the same considerations, we must adopt the latest technology to enhance the competitiveness of enterprises.Depending on the latest purple laser technology, our cost has been better controlled, the efficiency of platemaking has greatly increased, and the stability of development is now more than ever before. Great changes have taken place, and developers have only been replaced once in more than two months. Plate material development is the most difficult part of the CTP to control. It is no longer our trouble."

All in all, the advantages of violet laser CTP in terms of application cost, stability, and productivity have brought us the hope of rapid popularization of CTP. We believe that CTP itself is also developing and improving technology will bring us more surprises!

Reprinted from: China Packaging Business Network