The 40-year-old print shop, based in the Melbourne suburb of Truganina, changed its pre-press with a new Screen PlateRite 88600 NS thermal platesetter running Screen’s Equios workflow and Xingraphics’ FIT Xtra Melior plates.
The company had been with incumbent supplier Fujifilm for the past 25 years, and pre-press manager Paul Salmon said “we don’t change suppliers lightly”.
He told ProPrint that Lithocraft was convinced to swap because the Xingraphics plate range had been certified under Manroland’s PrintCom brand.
PrintCom is an umbrella term for a range of consumables tried and tested in Germany and given the Manroland seal of approval. Lithocraft operates as a PrintCom showroom in Australia.
Lithocraft runs three sheetfed Manroland presses: an eight-unit Roland 708 perfector, a five-unit Roland perfector with aqueous coating unit and a B2-format Roland 505 straight press.
Salmon said: “We had been with Manroland for over 20 years and been with Fujifilm for over 20 years. We don’t change suppliers lightly but Manroland have been a supplier for 20 years and when they said they backed [the Xingraphics plate], we took it seriously.”
He added that Lithocraft was motivated by a desire to return to a thermal set-up after running Fujifilm violet CTP for the past five years. “We wanted thermal; it seems to be the industry standard.”
Salmon said Lithocraft had been running the Screen and Xingraphics system since the end of last year, and been doing runs up to 250,000 impressions on the FIT Xtra Melior plates.
“That’s the vote of confidence you get out of the PrintCom gear,” added Salmon.
Xingraphics corporate vice-president Safwen Hijazi said the Lithocraft account showed that the Chinese pre-press manufacturer’s partnership approach was paying off.
“It certainly builds confidence in our technology and reinforces the global direction we have taken in partnering with Manroland and Screen,” said Hijazi.
He said the “robust” Fit Xtra Melior offered high resolutions of up to 10 microns, run length of up to 300,000 impressions unbaked or 1 million after baking.
“Lithocraft are using this with our Art range of chemistry, which is our low-chemistry solution, achieving longer bath life and between 50-60% of normal chemistry usage,” added Hijazi.
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