Twenty years after introducing the first develop on press plate, Kodak is convinced that Sonora Ultra sets a new barrier for this style of printing plate.
This is the sixth generation of process-free plates and is part of a continuous development line that has made Sonora the best selling process-free plate in the industry. The original version became Sonora XP, then Xtra, each time increasing scratch resistance and image contrast. The current Sonora Xtra3 has become the biggest seller with 6,000 users worldwide thanks to the broader range of applications it can address, including much longer runs and web offset printing.
Now Sonora Ultra removes further barriers to adoption. It has been developed largely at the plant in Germany. The coating is dyed to result in a strong green image before the plate is mounted on press. This is a higher contrast than previously possible and enables the plate to be read by camera systems used to identify the plate on press and needed for automated systems, such as Koenig & Bauer’s plate Ident system. Kodak rates the image as 1.5x stronger than the Ultra3 and 9x stronger than comparable plates.
Resistance to fading in white light is much greater and when protected the image will last for six weeks before loading on press if that is necessary. The change to the coating means that the plate is considered suitable for food safe applications.
Operation is not changed. The unwanted coating is removed in the first five rotations of the press and joins ink on the sheet rather than contaminating the fount. There is no need to change press set up says Kodak.
Scratch resistance is the same as the previous plate and it can be gummed for additional protection, though few will do this. Shelf life is anticipated at 12 months, ten months is currently quoted. Kodak is running limited distribution trials before the full commercial launch at the end of the year in Europe and in North America in the first part of the new year.
The plate suits the Magnus Q3600 Titan platesetter introduced at Drupa as the most versatile VLF platesetter on the market. It can cope with formats from 483x394mm to 1,600×2,083mm with a store of 7,500 plates held in different cassettes at one time. Full automation is a given.
