In the Grow Your Biz blog post, "Your Chemistry Free Plate Requires Chemistry", I challenged Agfa's "chemistry free" messaging claiming that Agfa's "chemistry free plates" were neither free of chemistry nor is the chemistry itself free. The posting triggered many to ask and a few to pose the question on PrintPlanet.com, "what chemicals are in that 'chemistry free' solution?" Agfa replied with "Agfa rolled-out the Azura implementation with the preservative gum as the only 'chemical.'" Our point exactly...

Just this week, Simon Nias of PrintWeek reported that "Fujifilm will replace 'misleading' chemistry-free tag with 'low-chemistry' for plate ranges". Kudos to Fujifilm for challenging the credentials of "chemistry free"..

Agfa - the cat's out of the bag. It's your turn to revamp your misleading marketing slogans and be honest to your customers.

Last week I was at this year's IFRA newspaper exhibition in Vienna, Austria. Whilst attendance may have been down on previous years, the Kodak booth was well visited by customers and our dealers.

At the show, we proudly launched our new VioletNews Gold plate for newspapers, which along with its developer system offers customers greatly reduced chemical usage, reduced waste, and associated costs - a hot topic with today's newspaper printers. The new developer system reduces replenishment and antioxidation dosing rates and allows higher developer capacity and cleanliness. This product is now fully available, and is a significant improvement over the established VioletNews product.

We also took the opportunity at IFRA to show a technology demonstration of a new thermal newspaper plate being developed that will reduce processing and equipment complexity with improved features and customer benefits.

These technologies are only the start of our future offset plate development path. Reducing complexity whilst maintaining or improving product performance across different customer requirements and conditions is a continuing goal.

Reducing the different stages of processing, as with the "Simple Process" plates being offered in today's market, or full elimination of processing steps, as with Kodak Thermal Direct (Commercial) and PF-N (Newspaper) Non Process plates, will not yet suit every customer or condition. Kodak is developing new products that will meet the various needs of the diverse newspaper printing industry. Certain market segments still need the performance and robustness only delivered today by preheat and/or prewash technologies.

However, our technology demonstration at IFRA showed a thermal no preheat, no prewash newspaper plate system, presently in early selected customer testing, that is aimed to deliver very high press robustness and chemical resistance with a shorter processing footprint and low chemical consumption. The customer should be able to use their existing processor, switching off the preheat and prewash sections, saving energy, water, and waste.

Customers I met with on the stand made it clear that in today's market newspaper printers are being challenged to improve costs, reduce waste, and be environmentally responsible, but they still need to maintain productivity, quality and deadlines.

These customers were keen to tell me that products must meet both today's and future demands, and in particular manufacturers must pay attention to the environmental aspects. Also, customers expect performance in prepress, on press and with the printed copy to be maintained if not improved.

Customer response to our product approach was very positive, confirming that reducing chemical usage, waste and associated costs was a large growing requirement in their business. Customers also confirmed that the need to maintain product performance was key, and our new VioletNews Gold plate and technology demonstration both were on target.

After reading Esko's "revolutionary" press release dated March 25 we did a fair bit of head scratching, and while it is not our normal style to comment on our competitors' press releases, we just had to respond with a couple of simple questions. So what is really new, and how can something that is not new be revolutionary?

So how is 4000dpi laser imaging and hybrid screening revolutionary for flexo? Hybrid screening has been in use for many years and there are lasers that are used for imaging flexo at 9600 and 12400 dpi.

Matching offset with flexo. Well that's nothing new either. The Kodak Flexcel NX System has been doing that for the last 18 months with a 2400dpi Squarespot imaging device. It achieves 1:1 image transfer from the digital file to the plate from 10 microns up to 300lpi using AM, hybrid and FM screening, the same as they use in offset.





And about square pixels in the data file and a round laser beam, even John's three year old Lilly knows that the round block does not fit properly in the square hole. This means that a 1:1 digital pixel to dot on plate can never be achieved with a round laser beam.

Irrespective of this "revolution" in resolution and screening technology (which as we said before is really nothing new) the fact that it is applied to traditional digital black mask flexo plates still remains, resulting in oxygen inhibition and rounded bullet shaped dots. These rounded bullet shaped dots are clearly accepted by some of the statements in the press release as causing variation in the press room, delays in press set up, reduced plate life and production inconsistency. This means that the plate is a major cause for variation in existing digital black mask flexo plate systems (here at Kodak we have been saying that for more than a year). The new imaging and screening does not change the profile of the printing dots, so how can it significantly affect their performance on press? High resolution and hybrid screening can certainly help your highlight and fine line performance; we have technology to do this too. Keeping the rounded dots there and keeping them consistent in real world production is the challenge, and only a flat top dot can enable the stability and wide impression latitude that we all desire for true consistency - it is simple physics 101!



Lilly also loves to draw with an ultrafine pencil, which is comparable to small dots, but even Lilly knows that coloring in the shapes in her coloring book takes a long time with such a fine pencil. It is just lucky that as a Flexo industry we don't need to do large solid areas on our plates, otherwise that could slow imaging down greatly.

ESKO claims that more than 90% of all digital flexo plates and sleeves are imaged on CDI imagers. We know this is not true. Kodak is a major supplier of flexo imaging devices and unless none of our customers are actually using their Thermoflex and Trendsetter NX devices to image flexo plates, then the statement must be false. I have actually visited and seen them working in trade shops and printers all around the world. When you see clearly overstated claims like this in a press release it makes you start to question all of the other claims.

Their sustainability statements are a little questionable too. Once again others seem to be hung up primarily in the solvent vs thermal debate instead of looking at the big picture, where industry data indicates that the greatest environmental impact that can be affected by flexo plate choice is in print production. So it's clear that the flexo plate should be chosen to reduce the actual number of plates used, optimize productivity and minimize waste in the pressroom.

Esko's statements throughout the press release indicate that the current digital black mask flexo plate system has a whole series of issues that need addressing - issues that have a serious effect on production performance, resulting in higher levels of waste. It's hard to see how just smoothing the dot edge of a round top dot will have the significant effect that they claim in all but the exceptional cases.

Wide impression latitude, significantly extended plate life and consistency are key parameters in minimizing this environmental impact. Sort these issues out and you really start to see the environmental benefits. The improved predictability, reliability and consistency that Kodak's plates deliver, with their 1:1 image reproduction and flat top dots, enable printers to achieve significantly improved waste reduction in production.

The Flexcel NX plate system was built for superior press performance, addressing many of the significant weaknesses of traditional digital flexo. The inherent weaknesses of digital flexo just can not be overcome with 4000 dpi imaging and hybrid screening alone, although they can do a nice job of masking some of the issues!

At best Esko's step forward is evolutionary for them..... it's certainly not revolutionary for flexo!

This post was co-written by Emma Schlotthauer, Global Current Marketing for Flexo at Eastman Kodak.