Abstract: A printing plate is directly mounted on a plate cylinder by first placing small holes in the non-image area of the printing plate on register holes in the plate cylinder and by then inserting register pins through the small holes and into the register holes so that the two holes are brought into complete registry with each other. Remounting a removed printing plate at the same position on the cylinder at which it was mounted before may be readily performed by relying on X-Y coordinates of the previous position for finding the corresponding register holes and then by reperforming the method as described above. This will result in a considerable reduction in the manpower required for the plate mounting operation and in the subsequent work to bring the plate into accurate registry with the cylinder.

Abstract: An apparatus for mounting a relief plate for letterpress printing on a carrier sheet includes a flat table for tautly fixing the carrier sheet, a holding stand extended across the flat table in the X-direction of a coordinate system, a first cursor connected to the holding stand for indicating a position in the Y-direction, and a second cursor connected to the holding stand for indicating a position in the X-direction. The apparatus further includes a first driving device for causing the holding stand to move in the Y-direction, a second driving device for causing the second cursor to move in the X-direction, a third driving device for causing the first and second cursors to move in a vertical direction, and a control unit which is computer-programmed to control the movements of the first and second cursors in the X-, Y- and vertical directions.