For more than 10 years, basysPrint has ploughed a lonely furrow, selling platesetters that expose conventional UV-sensitive plates instead of the laser-sensitive thermal and violet materials – generally referred to as CTCP (computer to conventional plate). The economic argument seems sound: conventional plates are about half the price of CTP material. Set up in 1992 specifically to develop UV setters, basysPrint showed its first machine at Drupa 1995 and has shipped about 750 units worldwide since then.
However, these weren’t enough to sustain the original German-owned business. BasysPrint went into receivership in 2004 and was rescued by Belgian manufacturer Punch Graphix, which also owns the Xeikon digital press and builds the Polaris violet CTP imagers for Agfa. Worldwide unit sales were up by a third in the first half of 2006, compared with the same period in 2005.
Heavy investment
Punch has invested heavily in basysPrint. It has just expanded the basysPrint factory in Germany, with a new £11m production area adding 60% more space to make a total of 6,880sqm. It has also set up a brand new factory in Shenzhen, China, to serve the Asian market, where locally made conventional plates are cheap and plentiful.
Over the years, a handful of other UV CTP products have been announced, most notably from Esko-Graphics, though its two separate projects were abandoned before production.
But now there is a real competitor for basysPrint that is in production and ready for orders. Lüscher announced a UV version of its established Xpose platesetter range at Ipex last year. It delivered the first two units to customers in Switzerland and Germany last week and this week is due to announce more details of prices and options. Interestingly, it will be possible to convert thermal Xpose imagers to UV, or vice versa, on-site.
In the UK, this could actually be good news for basysPrint. Its imagers may be expensive compared with standard thermal/violet platesetters from the likes of Agfa Kodak or Screen, but the Lüscher imagers have always been premium-priced. So both basysPrint and Lüscher will stand or fall on the economics of plate consumption.
Cost of ownership
BasysPrint recognises that running costs are key. Hans-Heinrich Benecke, Punch’s pre-press product manager, argues the economic case for UV plates on the grounds of total cost of ownership. “BasysPrint allows access to the world’s greatest variety of plate types. We are not linked to any supplier so there is lots of scope for negotiating consumables deals. UV setters cut operating costs – they are not the cheapest to buy, but they can integrate with lower cost RIPs and the plates are the cheapest.”
This means the return on investment for a basysPrint UV-Setter can typically be two years, and “in the third year, you’re saving money”. The setters have a long working life too, Benecke claims. “The last of our first generation machines was operational until last November, after 10 years’ use.”
Punch supplies potential customers with a cost analysis program called CTP Navigator, which allows them to feed in their own plate, chemistry and running costs and work out whether UV or thermal/violet would be cheaper.
All UV-setters are flatbed imagers with vacuum tables and moving heads. They are available in sizes covering 4-up, 6-up, 8-up and VLF, usually with a choice of one or two imaging heads. Some 250 4-up models and 440 8-ups have been installed. There are three sizes of VLF imagers, with 60 installations in total. These are the Series 11 (1,375x2,050mm, with option for 1,450x2,100mm), 15 (1,535x2,100mm) and 16 (1,535x3,170mm), all with two heads as standard for 10 plates per hour. Most VLF models require manual loading and unloading, but the 1142 has an automatic unloader, which means that UV-filtered safelight working is necessary.
The flatbed configuration and three-pin setting allows easy manual positioning of any size of plate up to its particular maximum format (unlike some drum setters, which can only handle certain sizes). Register pin bars of any pattern can be fitted in place of the three-pin system.
BasysPrint supplies a control unit to feed pre-ripped files into the imager, so any front-end that can produce 1-bit TIFFs is suitable.
The original 1995 UV-Setter 710 was very similar to a step-and-repeat plate exposure table, with a digitally controlled LCD ‘light shutter’ instead of film in the head. BasysPrint called the head DSI, standing for Digital Screen Imaging.
For the second generation DSI2 head, the LCD shutter was replaced by a DMD (Digital Micromirror Device), originally developed by Texas Instruments for the digital projectors beloved of PowerPoint users. Here, a bright UV light source shines continuously onto a DMD array. An array of individually controlled microscopically small mirrors (around half a million mirrors in a 1.5sq cm area) reflect parts of the light onto or away from the plate, building up the image as the head moves over the plate.
No stepping action
The original DSI heads had to pause at each imaging position, just like a step and repeat machine, but with DSI2 the head moves continuously with no stepping action. This improves the imaging speed, which was originally a bit of a weak point.
DSI3 technology was announced last October at Graph Expo in Chicago and is so far only available for VLF, as these models benefit most from the potential speed increase. DSI3 uses an array of LED lightmodules and fibre optics to conduct brighter light to the DMD head. Eight lightmodules are fitted as standard, but this can be expanded to 10 to boost the imaging speed of the original 10-up to 16 or 18 VLF plates per hour. Extra lightmodules cost £7,200 each, though they do have a lifetime of at least 10,000 hours.
The nature of the basysPrint imaging head, with its battery of microscopic square mirror elements, means that the pixels are square. “You get the maximum data transfer from file to plate,” Benecke claims. The basysPrint SuperCell technology also boosts quality, he says. “Without Super Cell, a 1,500dpi resolution gives 97 grey levels. With Super Cell, it goes up to 4,096 levels with, for instance, Harlequin Precision Screening.”
UV-setters can expose any ultra-violet sensitive material, so they will also work with conventional flexo or letterpress photopolymer plates, though this is rare in practice.
The UK has always been resistant to the basysPrint argument and only a handful of UV-setters have been sold here. In fact, since the Punch takeover, there’s only been one UK installation, a B1 format UV-Setter 743 at BPMG in Aylesbury about a year ago.
Still, BPMG director John Priest says he’s delighted with it. “I can’t figure out why more people don’t use it. It’s a good piece of kit and all the savings we projected have come to fruition. I’d have no hesitation in recommending it.”
He thinks that the lack of a big brand name such as Agfa or Fuji may make some users hesitate. “The other manufacturers say ‘there aren’t any others in the UK’, but once there were no other CTP machines either.”
Priest also says that rival manufacturers warned that conventional plate prices would go up as CTP production took over. “But this hasn’t been the case and, in fact, I was recently offered lower prices by another supplier, though I’m happy with the one we use.”
Priest says he worked out three-year costs of equipment, plates, replenishment, labour against other systems and found that basysPrint was the most economical when outputting 600-700 B1 plates per month. Today, BPMG outputs about 1,000 a month. He adds: “I can save money on basysPrint even with conventional HP.”
SPECIFICATIONS
Max plate size 1,450x2,100mm
Throughput up to 10 per hour
Inline punch no
Autoload optional (1144 model, £212.000)
Resolutions 900, 1200, 1,500dpi
Price £185,000
Contact Punch Graphix 01904 520 555 www.punchgraphix.com
THE ALTERNATIVE
Lüscher Xpose! 180 UV
XPose setters have a unique configuration of internal drums with imaging heads mounted on a travelling piston that holds them close to the plate surface. Autoloading and unloading is optional. UV models will have to be operated in safelight conditions as the plates cannot be shielded. All sizes in the new XPose
range will be available in CTCP UV-setting versions, with field conversions between thermal and UV, and vice versa, offered.
Max plate size 2,030x1,485mm
Throughput to be announced
Inline punch no
Autoload optional
Resolution 2,400dpi
Price to be announced
Contact Turning Point Technologies 0870 7744501 www.t-point.co.uk
