CTP - Computer to Plate

Screen strengthens its commitment to CTP

Thursday 29. May 2008 - Screen is the world’s leading CTP supplier with more than 30% market share and is proud of its status in the printing and prepress industries worldwide, with OEM agreements with several major graphic arts companies.

It continues to develop products for its customers’ ever-changing needs, such as the recently launched PlateRite Ultima 48000, which provides support for the new generation of XXL presses coming to the market. Screen’s commitment to CTP remains as solid, dependable and long-lived as its platesetters.

Today Screen provides a platesetter to suit all requirements from 4, 8, 16, 24, 36, 80 and 96 page devices, for commercial, newspaper and flexo applications. It is Screen’s expertise and superior technology that has secured its position as the world’s leading CTP supplier. The company entered the VLF plate imaging market in 2005 and the features of consistency, reliability and integral punching has led to a 25% share of the VLF market today. It is predicted that more machines than in any previous year will be shipped worldwide and will shortly see the sale of its 12,000th platesetter.

Screen continues to pour phenomenal amounts of research and development into CTP to ensure a product range that continues to meet, and predict, customers’ needs for reliability and productivity. In the last two years Screen has launched new platesetters for the flexo and newspaper industries and further models have been added for Drupa. These include the PlateRite FX1524, a new mid-range flexo device which generates a high quality dot and is aimed at the folding carton and flexible packaging market with a format of 1067mm x 1524mm.

Screen platesetters can be upgraded in the field as a user’s workload grows. Screen users can not only upgrade their automation in the field, but also, if they wish, start with a low productivity manual machine and move all the way up to a fully automated, high-speed model with the same base unit to suit their business needs.

Today Screen offers the most complete range of platesetters on the market with some of the highest output speeds available and the most reliable and comprehensive levels of automation all of which contribute to Screen being able to offer the best ‘Total Cost of Ownership’ figures in the industry.

At Drupa Screen will display CTP solutions on many different stands including its major OEM partners as well as companies such as Ipagsa, XinGraphics, Proteck and Toray.

Large format range: PlateRite Ultima
The PlateRite Ultima series comprises 16, 24, 26, 80 and 96 pages GLV-enabled thermal CTP systems. The two newest models that were launched in March, the PlateRite Ultima 40000 and PlateRite Ultima 48000, are designed specifically to support the new breed of XXL presses.

PlateRite Ultima 48000 offers the graphics industry the largest format output in the world. In recent years there has been a trend towards the expansion of a variety of printed products with shorter lifecycles. Advertising, such as mail order catalogues, periodicals and newspapers, are diversifying. The timelines are shorter with more frequent publishing release dates. Therefore there is an increased focus in Europe and North America on developing production equipment that makes it possible to produce a variety of printed materials while meeting tight deadlines, and increasing production efficiency at the same time. Major printing companies are investigating the benefits of incorporating large-format web offset presses into their expanding production lines, to enable the simultaneous large volume printing of a variety of printed products in multiple impositions.

To meet the needs for these emerging trends, Screen has devoted its resources and knowledge as the pioneer in the development of thermal CTP to create a machine that can output on to significantly larger plates than ever before. The PlateRite Ultima 48000 is the result of these efforts, and is now ready for the world market. This thermal device will facilitate the highest productivity from the new large-format web offset presses which are expected to spread throughout the industry in the near future. These presses require plates up to 2900mm x 1350mm plates, or up to 96 A4-size pages.

PlateRite Ultima 24000 and 36000 complement the new larger format presses and are ideal for sheetfed and web offset presses for commercial, magazine, book and packaging applications. Plus, the ability to image two B1 plates simultaneously makes them the fastest B1 platesetters in the world. A full set of B1 punched plates can be produced for a 12-unit press in less than 15minutes.

On show at Drupa
On Screen’s stand at Drupa (Hall 8b, Stand A61) are the PlateRite 4300 and PlateRite 8200 Niagara platesetters. Designed for the B2 market, the PlateRite 4300E can produce up to 11 plates per hour and can be upgraded in the field to the faster PlateRite 4300S, which is capable of 21 plates per hour. It has a variety of automation options, ranging from a simple, single autoloading cassette that holds 50 plates to a multi-cassette system that can provide 15 hours of unattended operation.

The PlateRite 8200 Niagara is an affordable CTP system that has been designed to bring the benefits of digital plate production to everyone. It features a patented imaging head that uses Screen’s advanced laser and optical technologies and this innovative approach has enabled the company to set a new price/performance point for CTP.

Workflow tools: Trueflownet
Screen continues to be committed to providing a comprehensive Trueflownet workflow solution that will drive all types of print on demand devices for document printing, display graphics, packaging and industrial printing.

At Drupa visitors will see tools that are optimised for digital output (e.g. variable data and versioning) and more tools to streamline production automation, monitoring and management.