The Great (Digital) Plate Debate

"Yesterday, the trend was aqueous and recycling. Today it's processless. Today, printers want to eliminate activities that are not core to their businesses," Ashton explains. "To make a plate, you have to image it, pre-bake it, process it, bake it, then post-treat it for more impressions—it's a manufacturing process. And, a printer's manufacturing should be printing on the press, not manufacturing plates. We're tying to eliminate the amount of manufacturing printers have to do. As a supplier, it's our responsibility to minimize the manufacturing effort required for the end-printed product."