CTP--What's New In Blue?

Blue laser diode platesetters (that actually emit energy in the violet spectrum) will be in vogue this year. Who will be the customer of choice for these technologically advanced units? What consumables (silver-based or negative-working conventional plates, for instance) will support a "true blue" 2000? Read on. . .

BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO

Blame Sony. For that matter, blame Pioneer. (Or, depending on where you sit on the issue, thank them.) These two major Japanese suppliers are feeding the race to develop the perfect blue-laser-based, gallium-nitride disk player, both trailing the current leader, Nichia Chemical Industries.

Why should you care?

Blue lasers, or shorter wavelength violet lasers, will be in big demand for next-generation storage and communications systems. Sony has so far achieved laser emission with continuous-wave operation in room temperature, a stage that only a few companies, including Nichia, have reached. Pioneer has reported a pulsed emission.

Figured it out yet?

Three letters: C-T-P.

Blue laser (or violet, for the true colorist at heart, as well as the consummate physicist) technology is prime for the platesetting market. It affords a far-cheaper consumable—the laser—to operate in a high-speed platesetting capacity. Escher-Grad became the first vendor to announce a platesetter based on blue-diode laser technology.

The Cobalt 8, a 32x40˝ design based on the same chassis as the existing EG-8200 film imagesetter, is promising to be both fast (3.3 minutes per plate at 2,540 dpi) and cheap ($79,990—plus postage and handling). However, it will not initially support a punch, and plate loading is purely a manual operation. The Cobalt 8 will expose visible-light plates from either Agfa or Fuji. The device can be configured to run at any two resolutions from 800 dpi to 3,000 dpi.

What else is out there, besides Cobalt 8? As of this minute, several vendors are developing blue platesetters, most shooting for a DRUPA 2000 launch in late May. Recently, Printing Impressions went to the technology sources on this issue—Blue 2000.

No doubt, by the time the much-hyped (and rightly so) DRUPA 2000 pulls the industry's collective fascination to Dusseldorf, Germany, May 18-31, there will be more than just words supporting, or discouraging, the blue laser's impact on future CTP purchase decisions, particularly by the smaller commercial printing facilities not yet vested in CTP. For now, however, words will have to suffice—as Escher-Grad's Cobalt 8 is the only formally announced device, and even the most outspoken technology movers and shakers are playing this CTP issue close to the vest.

The Push for Blue
Dave Bartrum, CTP marketing manager, Kodak Polychrome Graphics: The plate has a lot to do with whether or not a platesetter will be effective—plates must still meet the printer's requirements. I think that blue laser technology is positioning itself well for our industry—initially promising cheaper platesetters for use with the most sensitive, high-speed plates on the market right now. Some talk, on the impact of this blue laser platesetter push, might be premature this minute. Speaking purely from a plate media marketing perspective, I haven't really seen anything. If you've got something there, show it to me. I think the market, or potential market, is all conceptual right now. All the players have not been assembled.

Blue diode technology is not new technology; it is not trivial either. But a lot of work will have to go into achieving something which, in my opinion, given the quality and success of thermal CTP, is already comprised.

Ongoing Research
Tim Combs, vice president, marketing, Fujifilm: While it is true there has been a great deal of discussion (not to mention, a good deal of hype) on the merits and drawbacks of the blue laser, we feel that we're still a few years away from this being considered a truly viable technology. Fuji has been conducting ongoing research with blue laser diodes and UV laser exposure heads and, in fact, already has plate technology that could be used on such devices.

Our opinion is that blue laser diode exposure devices need further refinement to meet the exacting specifications of our industry. This is likely to take a few more years. UV CTP systems may be available sooner, but the cost of some of the exposure heads could be prohibitive in providing cost effective plate recording devices. However, both technologies offer significant promise for CTP systems, and we do expect to see several technology exhibits utilizing blue or UV diode technology at DRUPA in May.

At this point, we feel it is still too far away to predict exactly how this technology will impact the computer-to-plate movement in the United States.

Optimizing Plates
Steve Musselman, U.S. business development manager, Agfa: We are very closely studying blue (I prefer to say violet) laser diodes and their eventual impact on the CTP marketplace. At present, Agfa's Lithostar Plus blue-laser sensitive plate lends itself well to this technology, and I hear that it works very well on the Escher-Grad Cobalt 8. Leading up to DRUPA 2000, Agfa will most likely optimize its Lithostar plate to be targeted for use with these new violet laser diodes. This is not a tremendous leap for a plate manufacturer such as Agfa, since we already have Lithostar plates optimized for existing red, green and blue lasers.

For clarity, the laser diodes that we are seeing (not to be confused with the older gas-fired 488nm blue technology) are actually turning out violet, in the 400nm range, which offers a great opportunity to work in a very bright yellow plateroom environment. These devices can be manual platesetters with violet laser diodes optimized for use with these specially formulated silver-halide plates. The violet laser diode platesetters that should be hitting the market for DRUPA 2000 will be perfect for smaller commercial printing sites, looking to improve prepress productivity for runs up to 250,000 impressions at high imaging throughput.

There are two primary reasons why thermal plate technology has been of interest in the market: bright-light handling and impressions over one million. We've shown in the market that there is no significant difference in image quality on press between thermal and silver halide technologies. Smaller shops, naturally, will be interested in a violet laser diode platesetting device, but the device may go up market as well, as it proves itself in areas of quality and speed.

Thermal Mantra
John O'Rourke, product manager, Presstek: Buying in to Presstek's thermal mantra, [at least as far as] the company and its many partners believe, is akin to investing in a 401K or zero-coupon bond. It's insurance for the future, and in the long-term will deliver the highest cost benefit for those who take the time to truly understand all the issues.

Presstek chose thermal because thermal is an enabling technology: Thermal enables ablation, ablation enables process-free imaging, and process-free imaging is the ideal that we've been seeking to achieve.

So why perpetuate what is essentially a throwback to 20-year-old technology—the blue laser? The new millennium is not the time to go back to safelights and darkrooms. Presstek stands firm in its conviction that blue laser is not only a short-sighted solution, but an expensive one at that, particularly the inescapable fact that blue laser, in its current form, does not have the power potential to expose anything beyond silver halide.

Customers need to be reminded that silver halide is expensive to dispose of and cumbersome to handle. Sure, it seems cheaper. Prices on old technology always drop when there is a major technological transition: On the eve of the intro of the Model T, you could still buy a horse and buggy. But I think most would agree that the latter would be a little more of a burden.

As for the blue laser of DRUPA 2000, it will not be a lot more powerful than what is found in a CD player or supermarket checkout scanner. In fact, some of the world's top physicists have confirmed that blue laser diodes will not be ramped-up to produce enough power to make anything but old fashioned silver halide plates. Along with that comes all the issues the industry has been trying to get away from, including silver and chemical disposal issues and the need for darkrooms.

Not the Blues . . .
Citiplate Sees a Violet Future For Laser Diode CTP

By Charles Cusumano Jr., senior vice president of marketing and distribution, Citiplate

Citiplate foresees that affordable violet laser diode digital platesetters will come in abundance, in many sizes, and be able to image economical high-speed silverless plates—and deliver a new kind of profit-building CTP for the millennium, with tangible time and cost savings all printers can use.

In Citiplate's view, this UV CTP technology is destined to be an all-important player in the global CTP marketplace. It links the latest violet laser diode technology with the sound economics, history, success and proven track record of UV in the printing industry. UV CTP's digital imaging workflow simply adds a platesetter branch to the existing, traditional film-based platemaking flow most printers use and know well. Familiar yellow safelighthandling and aqueous-based processing also remain the same.

The UV CTP process capitalizes on use of plates with sensitive, high-resolution UV photopolymer emulsion coatings that can image quite nicely with a much smaller percentage of the UV energy than standard UV plates require. So, UV CTP is simply an easy, low-cost form of CTP that printers of all sizes can adopt, use and immediately turn to profit.

The economics of UV CTP are compelling. CTP users of Citiplate AQUA LHP high-speed UV plates report plate savings averaging 20 percent to 40 percent or more, compared to the cost of competitive CTP systems. Moreover, aqueous-based plate processing and use on-press stay exactly the same (and as easy) as they have always been, requiring no wholesale retraining or changes in pressroom procedures. Printers understand UV plates and feel comfortable with them.

In distinguishing Citiplate's UV plate technology from others on the market, this plate family employs a silverless line of UV-sensitive photopolymer emulsions, formulated and engineered to enable successful imaging with low to extremely low UV energy doses, while providing high resolution, long run-length and major economic cost-savings to printers. This plate family offers many speeds, including plates with the high exposure-sensitivity needed to work with low-millijoule energy output levels of violet laser diodes.

In fact, Citiplate's family of high-speed UV plates includes types perfectly suited to imaging by any UV means—analog or digital. That includes all present digital-UV platesetters, as well as emerging violet laser diode platesetters that loom large in printing's future.

At present, Citiplate is now the only U.S. manufacturer offering a broad choice of silverless high-performance plates having speed characteristics that match UV CTP and violet laser diode CTP platesetter energy levels, as well as all film-based platemaking methods. Citiplate's family of AQUA LHP System high-performance UV plates actually number four plate groups having unique degrees of UV-exposure-sensitivity. These groups, respectively, require: 40 percent; 20 percent; 4 percent; or 2 percent of the UV energy needed to expose an ordinary UV-sensitive plate.

So, Citiplate enables both printers and UV platesetter manufacturers to choose exactly the right set of UV plate characteristics they need to achieve optimum UV CTP results—an interesting positioning, as the blue laser diode platesetter promises to hit the market for DRUPA 2000.

Bottom line: Printers who paid those upfront costs to be early CTP adopters ended up with workable CTP that was "filmless" and "different." But those printers also discovered that CTP, in its initial stages, was very costly to operate—notably because of significantly higher special plate costs. Those costs cut into profitability and competitiveness.

With all the differences and costs CTP has demanded, it simply hasn't offered compelling enough advantages to convince printers to buy it in large numbers.

In 1999, according to some recently published figures, the worldwide rate of CTP system adoption crept along at about 2,500 CTP installations annually. Meanwhile, an estimated 95 percent of all offset printing is still being produced using film and contact frame or step-and-repeat machine-exposed UV plates. Clearly, this has left plenty of room for a potentially winning, alternative new generation of CTP.