This invention relates to a novel process and materials for producing infrared digitally imaged gravure cylinders.
Gravure is one of the principal four traditional printing processes (the others being offset lithography, flexography and screen printing). Each of these processes is distinguished from the others by where the ink resides in relationship to the surface of the master and which areas of the master provide the non-ink or background areas. Flexographic plates have a raised surface that accepts the ink, the background being the recessed surface. Offset lithography has the ink and the background coplanar, with the difference between ink and background areas being determined by surface chemistry. Screen printing has the ink printing through holes in the master, with the background being provided by the remaining master surface. Gravure has the ink residing in indented cells, background being provided by the remaining upper surface.
Each printing method demands its own types of ink, its own imaging system(s) and its own presses. Each process has its own advantages and disadvantages.
“Gravure Process and Technology” from the Gravure Association Of America (page 380) explains the advantages and disadvantages of gravure. Gravure is regarded as a very simple process compared to flexo and offset lithography. It is more adaptable to less expensive paper, and it gives better image quality and color consistency. Its main disadvantage is the high cost and the time needed to engrave gravure cylinders. This makes the gravure process inappropriate for short runs and indeed it finds its place in very long runs of up to and beyond a million impressions.
Gravure cylinders are prepared by either imaging a photoresist through a film and then chemically etching the metallic surface of the cylinder, or by directly engraving the cylinder with some type of engraving tool. Electromechanical engraving is a slow process. Etching has to be very carefully controlled as it tends to spread laterally as it progresses downwards to give undercutting of cell walls.
In recent years, with the advent of computers, origination for reproduction by printing processes has become available in digital form and much work has been done in imaging printing plates digitally and more specifically using a modulated laser beam for such imaging. Because of the necessity for engraving specific holes to produce the cells needed for gravure, gravure printing has a long history of attempts to use lasers for digital imaging. Thus U.S. Pat. No. 3,636,251 to Daly et al describes a system for engraving intaglio printing plates by forming cells in a metal plate using a pulsed output laser. UK Patent Application, GB 2034636A claims that the former patent method has the disadvantage that it tends to produce rims round the gravure cells. The British patent claims an advantage in using polymeric printing blanks for laser engraving, where such blanks have high thermal conductivity. The areas struck by the laser are vaporized. Carbon black may be incorporated into the polymer to improve absorption of the laser energy. More recently, U.S. Pat. No. 5,126,531 to Majima et al described a method of producing a gravure printing plate using a thermoplastic resin sheet containing about 20 percent of carbon. The plate was wrapped around a cylinder and imaged by a semi-conductor laser beam.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,048,446 to Michaelis suggests building up walls by plating using a photoresist mask, but such masks are of thicknesses down to 1 micron, which makes them suitable for IR imaging but makes it impossible to then build up walls with straight sides to a thickness of 12 or more needed for good quality gravure cells. Thick plating using thin masks tend to spread so that they overhang the thin mask—a problem that the '446 patent fails to address.
The present invention provides a gravure printing blank that can be easily and quickly imaged digitally by means of laser imaging.
The present invention further provides a pre-polymer-metal cylinder printing blank in which pre-polymeric and other layers are coated onto the metal, wherein the uppermost surface can be imaged to take the form of a photo-tool that acts as a mask for depositing cell walls of uniform depth.
The present invention additionally provides a gravure printing blank where the top coat is an infrared absorbing layer, that after imaging acts as a UV mask, through which the internal areas of the cell in the gravure cylinder are hardened before washing out the polymer in the wall areas to expose the metal surface of the cylinder, which may subsequently be filled with a hard insoluble material by, for instance, plating to produce cell walls.
In an alternative embodiment, the present invention provides a process using a separately supported photo-tool, produced by conventional photographic or thermal means, that can be wrapped around the pre-polymer coated surface to provide a UV mask for hardening the areas of the pre-polymer corresponding to the internal part of the cells, before washing out the polymer in the wall areas to expose the metal surface of the cylinder, which may subsequently be filled with a hard insoluble material by, for instance, plating to produce cell walls.
In a further alternative embodiment, the present invention provides a means for preparing a gravure plate or cylinder, avoiding all etching or plating processes.
In a further alternative embodiment the present invention provides a pre-polymer metal cylinder printing blank, in which the pre-polymer is UV sensitive and can be digitally imaged so that it can then be selectively washed out, further cured and then provide a mask for depositing cell walls of uniform depth.
Reference is made to
The layer 27 is coated with a layer of carbon black 28, by any known coating method. Such a coating is relatively thin and is in the range of 0.3 to 3 microns, but preferably 0.8 to 1.5 microns.
Alternatively, as shown in
The composition of the layer 27, when it is not used with a separate mask 31, but with the integral layer 28, comprises the following components:
In addition, there are optional ingredients such as fillers and wetting agents and dyes or pigments to aid visual examination of the layer. The entire mixture is deposited as a coating from a non-aqueous solvent. Dry layer thickness can be anything from 10 microns to 80 microns. This somewhat depends on its functionality, as described below.
Whereas a large range of UV curable materials and photo-initiators known in the art can provide useful components for layer 27, the preferred resins used are those showing suitable duality of solubility in both aqueous and non aqueous solvents. The resin system must be solvent soluble so that the monomers and oligomers of section (a) will dissolve easily and give a compatible dry film. The preferred resin system should have aqueous solubility, preferably at a pH of greater than 8 so that, as described below, the uncured layer can be washed away.
Although it is possible to make a system where the layer is washed away with organic solvent, it is environmentally desirable to have the layer water dissolvable. Examples of types of resins that are useful in the system are Novalaks (functionally substituted phenol-formaldehyde resins), styrene maleic anhydride copolymers, polyvinyl methyl ether/maleic anhydride copolymer and its esters, hydroxy propyl cellulose and esterified rosin-maleic esters.
In the embodiment of
Other ingredients of layer 28 may be carbon black and surface active agent. This layer may also contain UV absorbing materials such as dyes or pigments, to enhance performance when this layer is used as a mask during the process and may contain infrared absorbing materials other than carbon black. The total thickness of this layer can be anywhere between 0.3 and 3 microns. The layers 27 and 28 must be such that once the total composite is made, the top layer 28 is not easily physically damaged by handling. With the layers described in this patent, it has been found that this is achieved by the interaction of layers 27 and 28. Thus, if the identical coating 28 is made on polyester film, the dried film will be very easily removed by gently rubbing with a finger. This is easily understood when there is no binder present, as it would be expected that without binder the layer would have no physical strength. However, when coated on layer 27 as described, the coating 28 exhibits rub resistance under identical conditions. This is particularly important as it permits layer 28 to be formulated with optimum sensitivity to infrared radiation, because of little or no binder present and at the same time to have sufficient UV optical density to give adequate masking conditions during the curing stage of the process.
Referring back to
The ablated layer 28 is shown in
Alternatively, instead of plating with copper, a tougher metallic layer such as chromium can be used to form the cell walls. Such walls will not require the additional stage of plating that is necessary if copper is used to form the walls.
As present, gravure image processing plants include means for recovering cylinders by stripping off the image and re-plating with copper and also have chromium plating facilities. It is evident that such plants would have the necessary equipment to form the cell walls by plating processes as described above and would not need to re-equip. If the walls are composed of electrodeposited chromium, then the cylinder may be re-used with a new image by removing the chromium layer before re-coating with polymer. Existing processes generally utilize both copper and chromium layers. Copper is used in electromechanical imaging because it is soft and in etching processes because it is relatively easy to etch. The use of chromium to produce the walls by plating thus eliminates a stage in existing processes. This stage in existing processes is necessary by the nature of the process, because chromium cannot easily be electromechanically imaged and cannot easily be etched.
In an alternative embodiment,
A further embodiment of the invention is described in reference to FIG. 4. This is an identical structure to that shown in
Thus, the method of producing gravure printing plates according to the present invention is distinguished from other known methods in that it neither uses photomechanical imaging nor an etching process to produce a gravure image formed of a metallic layer. This saves on disposal problems for etchant is solutions. Also, the process of etching is subject to under-cutting—the expansion of cell size as the etchant penetrates and spreads below the cell walls. This limits the thinness of cell walls. The present invention provides pre-formed polymer moulds to give vertical sided walls.
It should be clear that the processes described above can be made to generate a gravure image pattern whereby the ablated areas that were originally imaged by the infrared radiation become the cells, which will then receive ink during the printing process and the unablated areas become the gravure cell walls.
The following example describes an experimental plate, constructed and produced to illustrate the invention.
The following composition was made up (parts by weight) and milled in a ball mill for 2 hours;
After milling, the following ingredients (all parts by weight) were added and stirred in, one by one:
The mixture was bar coated onto 100 micron epoxy, coated with 12 microns of copper to a dry weight thickness of 25 microns by evaporation of the solvent at 140° C. for 2 minutes. This constituted layer 27 in this example.
The following composition was made up;
This material was bar coated on top of the previously described layer, to a dry weight of 0.8 grams per square meter and air-dried. It was not possible to easily measure the thickness of this coat, as it penetrated the surface of the previous coating and became bound in to the extent that it could be handled without causing damage, even though it did not contain any binder itself. The same coat, when applied to uncoated polyester film and dried, showed absolutely no adhesion to this surface.
The above composition constituted layer 28 in this example. This finished member was then mounted on a drum, as shown in the FIG. 1 and exposed by a laser diode array as described hereinabove. The image was in the form of cells. Exposure was such as to create an energy flux of 1100 milli Joules per square centimeter. The imaged plate was flood exposed to UVA UV radiation. The member was then washed with a solution of the following composition (parts by weight):
The member was then rinsed with water, dried and then flood exposed with UV light.
The resulting plate was then used as the cathode in a plating bath of copper sulfate and sulfuric acid with a copper anode. Plating was continued until a 20 micron thickness was attained.
The polymer was then washed away with ethyl lactate and the copper plate was finished off by electroplating with chromium.
This application claims the benefit of Provisional Application No. 60/272,033, filed Mar. 1, 2001.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/IL02/00029 | 1/14/2002 | WO | 00 | 9/2/2003 |
Publishing Document | Publishing Date | Country | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
WO02/07025 | 9/12/2002 | WO | A |
Number | Name | Date | Kind |
---|---|---|---|
3280736 | Schafler et al. | Oct 1966 | A |
3636251 | Daly et al. | Jan 1972 | A |
4437942 | Datwyler | Mar 1984 | A |
4567827 | Fadner | Feb 1986 | A |
5126531 | Majima et al. | Jun 1992 | A |
5994032 | Goffing et al. | Nov 1999 | A |
6048446 | Michaelis | Apr 2000 | A |
6609459 | Figov | Aug 2003 | B1 |
Number | Date | Country |
---|---|---|
0 816 920 | Jan 1998 | EP |
1 310 651 | Mar 1973 | GB |
2034636 | Jun 1980 | GB |
Number | Date | Country | |
---|---|---|---|
20040216627 A1 | Nov 2004 | US |
Number | Date | Country | |
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60272033 | Mar 2001 | US |