CTP Plate: The Future Direction of Printing Material

The CTP plate is now widely used in direct platemaking technology. At present, the main types of ctp plates are silverhalogen plates, photopolymer plates and thermal CTP plate.

The silverhalogen plates consists of a plate base, a silver halide emulsion layer and a physical developing layer. As for the plate base, there are paper-coated plate base, polyester plate base and aluminum base plate. For offset printing, the aluminum base pate is more used. It is a widely used plate, but it has the problems of complicated development and pollution, and needs to be further improved.

The photopolymer CTP plate is composed of a plate base, a photosensitive layer and a protective layer. The photosensitive CTP plate has undergone significant development in recent years, especially the introduction of violet photopolymer plate, greatly improving the sensitivity of this plate.

The appearance of thermal CTP plate is relatively late, which is firstly developed by Kodak and 3M in the 1990s. The thermal CTP technology has developed rapidly in the past 10 years, gradually becoming the mainstream of CTP technology.

Films and printing plates are two types of photosensitive materials commonly used in printing plates. In recent years, CTP technology has spread rapidly around the world. The traditional platemaking process from film imaging to PS plates is gradually being replaced by CTP technology.

The demand for platemaking films and conventional PS plates has gradually decreased, and the demand for CTP plates has grown rapidly. It is predictable that the CTP technology will be the direction of the platemaking industry. Similarly, CTP plates will be the development direction of the printing photosensitive material.