Agfa has announced a new chemistry-free plate, the Azura TE, which is the first Agfa plate that is developed direct-on-press. Since the plates are cleaned out on-press, the system requires no processor, no chemistry and no water.
According to Agfa, Azura TE behaves very similarly to a traditionally processed or chemistry-free plate, limiting the variables in press room operations. The plates clean out rapidly and ink acceptance is immediate, both resulting in sellable sheets after only a few copies.
Guy Desmet, Agfa’s head of prepress marketing, commented: “Azura TE shows an outstanding image contrast thanks to our patented Thermochromic Dye technology. That makes visual inspection easy and means that dot measurements or plate detection can be done with standard devices.”
The Azura TE plate also has good daylight stability so that the plates don’t have to be used immediately after exposure.The plate supports up to 240 lines per inch with Sublima screening.
Agfa spent a year testing the plate in the field all over the globe with both Agfa and non-Agfa platesetters, as well as a wide range of founts, inks and press architectures.
The Azura plates use Agfa’s ThermoFuse technology, which uses a single-layer water-based coating, containing ink-accepting latex pearls, small enough to deliver razor-sharp highlight reproduction.
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