Abstract: An apparatus for curing a printing plate made of or having photo-curable material, a method of curing such a printing plate, and a printing plate cured by the method. One embodiment of the method includes curing a printing plate made of or having photo-curable material thereon. The method includes producing light energy on part of the printing plate using a light exposure unit capable of generating at least a first illumination intensity and a second illumination intensity, such that curing can produce printing features on the plate that can be switched to have either flat tops or round tops according to the illumination intensity output by the light exposure unit.

Abstract: An imaging cylinder includes a clamping device embodiment with a pair of independent adjacent clamping elements, and a method embodiment includes placing end edges of a flexible plate between each of the clamping elements of the clamping device and a surface approximately flush with the outer surface of the cylinder. One or more biasing devices, e.g., springs are used to impart a force onto the placed plate towards the surface approximately flush with outer surface of the cylinder. For each independent clamping element, a crank and lever mechanism or other means to translate rotative motion to approximately rectilinear motion is used to open a space between the clamping element and the outer surface when a rotative force is manually applied to provide for mounting and unmounting an end of a plate.

Abstract: Images are transferred to printing plates by illuminating light-responsive materials with patterns corresponding to the images to be printed. The present invention provides for the transferring of an image by the combined flux from two or more beams of light. Particular embodiments ablate the mask printing plates for CTP systems by the combined illumination from a first, broad beam and a plurality of controllable, pulsed beams that co-illuminate the plate with the first beam. The resulting system and method is less expensive than the prior art and produces a printing plate more efficiently and with improved productivity than the prior art.

Abstract: A cylindrically-shaped tube fitting over a cylindrically-shaped base body rotatable around an axis of rotation. The tube has a cylindrically-shaped inner surface defining a hollow region, a cylindrically-shaped outer surface, a first end, and a second end. The base body is arranged to fit either a sleeve or the tube. The outer surface includes vacuum grooves or a plate clamping system or both, and arranged to secure a flexible sheet of material around the outer surface of the tube.

Abstract: A method includes exposing a plate on a support surface of an imager using one or more laser beams, the exposing while there is a metallic screen structure located on the support surface between the plate and the support surface such that the amount of back-reflected radiation is reduced compared to the plate being placed directly on the support structure with no screen between the plate and support surface. An apparatus includes the combination of a base material having the support surface and the metallic screen structure thereon.

Abstract: A method of modifying screened image data so that there is no visible seam when the image is printed repeatedly in a circumferential direction, for example using a drum output device. One version applicable to images screened using a supercell includes cutting the image so that the image size in the circumferential direction is an integral number of screen supercells. Another version includes displacing halftone dots in a neighborhood of the seam such that the seam is not visible in a repeated print.