Pros and Cons of Pre-, Post- and No-bake Plates

When you heat a plate before you expose it, you open up avenues to several benefits, including the use of inexpensive radiant heat, not expensive laser light, to prepare the plate for imaging. You still have to image the plate, but pre-heating means the plate is warmer that it would ordinarily be when it enters the imaging stage. Thus, less laser energy is required during the imaging process.