Product Reviews

What a difference 12 months make. After a desperately poor 2009, a perfect storm of factors helped the platesetter market make a dramatic recovery last year, with manufacturers reporting steep rises in equipment sales.

"We sold twice the number of platesetters last year compared to 2009," says Screen managing director Brian Filler. "Confidence within the industry has returned, with Ipex proving to be a catalyst for many companies to invest in higher-speed machines."

According to Filler, ever decreasing run lengths have meant faster platesetters are becoming all the more necessary to keep up with press demand. Screen's own latest B1 PlateRite is five times faster than its earliest model.

In addition, manufacturers believe the platesetter market has now matured to the point where early models are ripe for replacement. "The CTP market exploded in the early 2000s and now many of those machines are reaching the end of their life," explains Agfa director of commercial sales Ralph Hilsdon. "Older platesetters that are difficult to repair, or have obsolete spare parts, should really be replaced."

Hilsdon agrees with Filler that the productivity of the platesetter is critical. There are significant cost differences between machines of varying throughput, but Hilsdon believes that, in most cases, the extra expense can be justified. "A printer with only two presses may not think they need a fast platesetter. However, whereas an average job may take two hours today, come next year it may only take an hour. So effectively, plate demand will have doubled."

Automated plate loading and unloading will only help to speed the platemaking process up. Sean Lane, product manager for offset solutions at Fujifilm believes automation can go a long way to help save on staff costs. In theory at least, many platesetters can be left unattended overnight.

Lane also says it's important to make sure the technology is as 'future-proof' as possible. "Choose a platesetter with trusted technology, such as thermal or violet, which will be able to keep up with demand for the next two to three years," he says.

Today, processless and chemistry-free platemaking now accounts for around half of total plate production. Aside from being more environmentally friendly, removing chemistry increases the productivity of the platemaking process as there is much less cleaning and maintenance involved.

"Unless they have run-length of more than 250,000, or if they work with UV inks, which tend to be very hostile to the plates, I would go so far to say that any printer that can switch to processless or chemistry-free production, will make that switch," says Hilsdon. "The benefits far outweigh the disadvantages."