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

With thermal plates, pre-heating creates a negative-working plate, which can then be used with either other thermal plates or conventional, negative film.

Jeffrey Zaloom, director of R&D for PDI, says that pre-baking is required when using some thermal plates. "Pre-baking thermal CTP surface plates is necessary to fully expose the image. Portions of the plate exposed to the platesetter form a strong acid in the coating matrix. Heating catalyzes the reaction between the acid and polymer to either cause crosslinking or de-protection of the polymer system to create an image."