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A-SPEC Coating

TOP > Technology > A-SPEC Coating

New product! A patent application is pending.

In order to maintain consistent printing quality.

Advantages

・Using the A-SPEC coated plate reduces ink clogs dramatically in recessed areas such as outlined letters, small print and dotted patterns.

・By preventing ink from being deposited into grooves on the plate, consistent printing quality is assured.

・By reducing time wasted by cleaning the plate during printing, the printing machine‘s down-time is shortened.

・Using the A-SPEC coated plate improves the operational rate of the printing machine.

・Even if foreign objects such as dust become attached to the plate, these objects will not remain there for a very long.

・Using the A-SPEC coated plate makes cleaning plates after printing dramatically easier.

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In various industries that use resin plates such as curved surface printing (dry offset) and letter presses, it is rapidly becoming the trend to diversify and process small lots; therefore, more improvements in printing machine productivity is essential. Printing machine down-time due to frequent changes of plates as well as due to plate cleaning is the largest problem from the standpoint of cost reduction. On the other hand, the required printing quality is continues to become more demanding. It is also important to maintain consistent printing quality. In these days, global environment protection laws are moving towards anti-VOC, so that reducing the amount of organic solvent for plate cleaning is required. All of these issues were considered difficult to improve efficiently for the printing method that utilizes pressure on engraved plates.

Ink adhered to the plate surface does not completely move to the blanket, and part of it remains on the plate. When ink is transferred from the inking roller to the plate’s surface or when ink is transferred from the plate’s surface to the blanket, ink seeps out and adheres to the shoulders of the plate due to the pressure. Deposited excess ink causes a fattening of dots or letters and thereby reduces print quality. Therefore, in order to maintain consistent printing quality, the printing machine had to be regularly stopped to remove deposited ink from the plate’s surface.

A-SPEC Coating Features

A-SPEC Coating is an extremely thin coating that does not require high-temperature treatment for fixation of the coating material. In common coating technology, even a thin coating has a coating thickness of more than 10μm and this thickness cannot be used for printing plates because image distortion can occur. Also, to fix common coating material requires a high-temperature heating treatment, but resin-engraved plates cannot withstand such high temperatures. The A-SPEC coating film is extremely thin with 10nm, and it can be fixed below the temperature limit of the resin plate without damaging the plate.

If A-SPEC Coating is applied to the resin plate…

the printing machine’s operational rate will be improved.

Shorter printing machine start-up time and the enabling of continuous operation by reducing time lost to plate cleaning during printing
Increases productivity by reducing down-time and improving the printing machine operation Reduces waste in materials used for printing.

print quality will be maintained.

The same high-quality printing as at the start of a print job lasts longer than with existing technologies.

It improves the cleaning situation of the plates.

Cleaning the plate after printing is easier, and a reduced amount of cleaning liquid is required.

Test example