Greg Shurman, Colourpress general manager, says the decision to go with the two Trendsetters has delivered a “massive” improvement.

“We went with Creo because we believe it was the best solution in regards to the technology it offered and from a support point of view. It also produces a better quality plate, and with the thermal technology, it makes for a sharper dot on the plate,” says Shurman.

“It has also improved the platemaking efficiency out of sight. We’ve taken our prespress down from 400 man hours to just 80, and increased throughput dramatically.”

Shurman says the main reason for the purchase was the realisation that it was time to move from a film-based prepress process to CTP production.

“We were finding the manual laying of plates too inefficient, and because we are using panorama plates on our Goss Community press, there was always a margin of error when laying plates manually. This is not to disrespect the tradepeople we had, but we had to move on from that,” says Shurman.

The Trendsetter News CTP device is an external drum system which offers 830nm thermal laser imaging with automated plate loading and unloading, and features Creo’s proprietary Squarespot imaging technology.

The Trendsetter News 70 can image 72 320mm plates, or 32 1030mm plates, per hour, while the Trendsetter News 100 can image 100 320mm plates, or 48 1030mm plates, per hour. Repeatability between two plates imaged by the same device is 10 microns for the largest plate size, while accuracy between different devices is at 40 microns for the largest plate size, and is capable of imaging at resolutions up to 2400dpi.

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