Waterless plates are available in .30 and .15 pos. and neg., the same as litho plates and fit  directly in place of litho plates on all web and sheet-fed presses, eliminating the damping system completely.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATE

Waterless plates consist of a sheet of aluminium coated with an ink receptive polymer (image area), then coated with a photo sensitive, ink repellent, silicone polymer (non image area). The thickness of this silicone layer is 2-4 microns depending on the grade of plate. The plate has a thin film of transparent plastic that is taken off prier to development.

To print Waterless successfully a Printer has to learn a slightly different set of rules.

The majority of minders have done a 3 to 7 year apprenticeship for litho. With Waterless they get a lesson in the morning and are up and running in the afternoon.

The fact that there is no dampening  system to worry about means that the most difficult process to understand (ink/water balance) has been eliminated.

Once the effects of temperature and press settings are understood the process is simple and the results are very rewarding in terms of quality, ecology and cost savings.

Waterless printing can run on modern roller cooled multi unit presses, but it will also run very successfully on standard / old presses with no modification other then taking out the dampers.

True if you want to run at 10,000 iph for 24 hours a day the machine is going to get hot very quickly, but how many old presses will run at 10,000 iph

We have customers operating all sorts of machines Waterless all day with no cooling what so ever.

The results that can be achieved depend on many things :
 
        Ambient temperature-machine room environment
        Machine settings
        Ink-paper
        Run length-machine speed
        and most important training-support