CTcP Principles and Advantages

Since the introduction of the desktop publishing system (DTP), the printing industry has been seeking new ways of making plates so that the high speed of computers can be better reflected. In 1995, computer-to-plate technology, known as CTP technology, came out. This technology no longer requires film processing such as development and fixing of the film, and it also eliminates the need for manual imposition of the process. Instead, it directly copies digitally processed textual information obtained by computer processing onto the printing plate. The birth of it has achieved the perfect combination of computer typesetting and high-speed plate making, bringing a true technological revolution to the plate making process. However, this technology is not perfect. One of the fatal problems that affects its popularity is that the plates used by this technology are expensive. In fact, many users are very keen to adopt CTP technology, but the high cost of consumables makes them daunted.

(a) The historical mission of CTcP

In 2000, Computer to Conventional Plate (CTcP), a traditional computer-to-plate technology, was used. Because the plate used by this technology is the traditional PS version, it greatly reduces the application threshold of CTP technology, and it also breaks the bottleneck that restricts the application of CTP. It can be said that the emergence of CTcP technology is more like a major historic mission to solve the problem of expensive plates. The emergence of CTcP technology has realized a leap forward in direct plate-making technology, which has epoch-making significance.

(B) The principle of CTcP

At present, there are not many companies that develop CTcP technology, but only the UV-setter series platemaking system developed by BasysPrint is truly practical and has been put on the market. This device uses a UV light source with a spectral range of 360-450 nm. The specific working principle is that the ultraviolet light emitted from the light source is converged onto the DMD (digital micromirror device) and is imaged on the plate by the refraction of the DMD.

The core component of the UV-setter series CTcP system is the DMD. This is a wafer of about 4 square centimeters with millions of microscopic lenses. Each micro-mirror will process the image information transmitted by the RIP of the grating and act according to the exposure requirements. For the required light, the light is directly refracted and passes through the optical lens system to reach the surface of the printing plate to expose the photosensitive material of the printing plate; for the undesired light, the micro-mirror is deflected, so that this part of the light cannot pass through the lens system and is even more unreachable. Plate surface. With this technique, each micromirror responds similarly to 0 or 1 in digital, and the exposure point formed by each micromirror on the plate is a basic pixel. A plurality of basic pixels together form a printing dot. The CTcP system uses a precision screw system to drive the exposure head. The action and positioning are precise. This ensures that the images can be stitched together seamlessly with a precision of 2 microns. Currently, this system has an exposure rate of 10 exposures per second.

CTcP also has a characteristic, it uses the exposure technology is a very small square pixel, the pixel size between 10 to 28 microns, the specific size and DMD model. This square pixel has a very sharp edge so that it can maintain the high quality of the image. In general laser technology, there will be mutual overlap between the circular pixels, and this will not happen between square pixels and pixels. This is a clear advantage of CTcP technology for square pixel imaging.

For users, this network means that high-quality printing can be achieved even with lower resolution. In practice, there are many advantages to using low resolution, such as significantly shorter RIP time, reduced data processing, saving computer system memory, and faster exposure. For example, the number of screens for general high-end commercial printing jobs is 200 lpi. With other CTP systems, the resolution should be 1500 dpi. With CTcP technology, the same high quality images can be obtained with lower resolution.

(C) The advantages of CTcP

CTcP has many advantages. The most obvious is to reduce production costs, improve production efficiency, and save time.

1. Can use traditional PS plate material, greatly reduce the cost of production There has been a lot of debate on the various CTP plates and exposure light sources. In various CTP systems, a special CTP plate is inevitably needed, which is very expensive. The plate used in CTcP plate making is a cheap conventional printing plate, which is the general PS plate used in the current process. Using CTcP, you can save film material and processing materials, saving the time of manual imposition.

In the workshop, since CTcP uses a conventional PS plate, there is no need to add new equipment and purchase new chemicals. All work in accordance with the traditional PS plate making process.

2. Easy to operate

Can operate in a bright indoor environment, can easily print a variety of sizes of the printing plate, but also handle multiple pieces of plate at the same time, multiple exposures on the same plate material.

3. Improve the printing quality

Many users who use CTcP have working experience with film printing. After the film is not needed, the print quality of the printed matter is significantly improved because the images and dots are not affected by the quality attenuation in the traditional prepress process. After the printing plate, the quality is better, because the dust, scratches and other factors on the film no longer exist, and the positioning is more accurate. In short, the network points obtained by the CTcP plate making technology are the first-generation network points that are directly transmitted to the printing plate, and their edges are clean and sharp, faithful to original manuscripts.

4. Reduce print debugging time and material loss

Since no plate orientation is required, the quality of the plate is better, and it is not necessary to re-plate because of inaccurate positioning, and it takes a lot of time to print on the machine. With more and more short-lived prints in the entire printing industry, change-overs and on-machine debugging have become regular tasks, reducing printing commissioning time, which can significantly save time and costs. CtcP plate making is more accurate than traditional analog plate making, so when the machine is commissioned, it reduces the waste of water, paper, ink and other consumables.

5. No need to change the current hardware configuration

CTcP can use 1 bit/tiff format data, and can use RIP data, can use conventional developer and processing chemicals, without using a special network interface, can be networked with the existing network environment.
6. Printing customers are more satisfied

The printing customers are more satisfied with the quality of the printed matter and the printing production time is shorter. This means that the delivery is more timely and the operating costs of the factory are reduced, which makes the printing company take the lead in the fierce market competition.

7.Advantages of UV light plate making

Exposure with a UV light source of 360 nm to 450 nm means that a conventional PS plate can be used in the direct plate making process. This is a printing plate that has been used by printers for many years and is familiar with its performance and processing procedures. The technology is mature and the PS plate is more heat-sensitive. CTP plates and violet laser plates are cheaper, and PS plates are the most used printing plates in the printing industry worldwide. There is no need to train printers because they already know the performance of this plate.
For the printing jobs and plate sizes, there are supporting CTcP platesetters, so its application is very extensive. In the printing of newspapers, simple embossing and complex commercial printing, CTcP can show its talents. Obviously, CTcP goes further than CTP.

(IV) Application

Once CTcP technology appeared, it was immediately sought after by the printing industry. In just a few years, Germany's Winning Graphic Arts has successfully installed 530 UV-setter systems worldwide. With more companies involved in this field, I believe that CTcP technology will have more room for development in the future.

At present, CTcP technology has also entered the Chinese market. Hong Kong-China (China) Group Co., Ltd.'s ACME Acme Group Co., Ltd. (http://) acts as a sales and service provider for BISC's CTcP system in South China and Hong Kong. As soon as the China South China International Printing Exhibition will be held at the Guangzhou International Convention and Exhibition Center on March 8-11, 2005, ACME Acme Group Co., Ltd. will present the latest results of CTcP technology.