Polymer plates in the UK
Hello all,
I am working with an Adana 8x5. I am wondering if anyone is using polymer plates in the uk and knows of a good supplier. I have found one company but they don’t have much relief to their plates, I’m looking to achieve some embossing.
I know Box car offer a deep relief plate, has anyone had some shipped over? it it worth the shipping costs?
Thanks for your help.
Lucie
Hi Lucy, I am researching polymer plates in the UK but no luck! Have you had any luck at all?
Hi
This was covered in a previous post a year or so ago, I’ll paste in my comments from then:
“…to be honest I’ve found it very difficult to find people in the UK offering a supplier service for photopolymer plates – I suspect there are a few small-scale letterpress printers out there who use photopolymer water washout plate making units ‘in-house’ for short runs but they don’t seem to be offering a bureau service (which is understandable as for most commercial printers letterpress is dead as a Dodo – a Vanderwhat?…).
I am slightly confused by the UK position – there also seem to be people out there offering ‘flexo’ photopolymer but I believe these are softer plates for printing on to bottles etc.
The three leads I have are:
www.flexoshop.co.uk – sounds promising and they’ve heard of letterpress! – I talked to them recently about the type of plate they use and they seem to have a plate with a decent density for use with the boxcar base for example.
www.rankingraphics.co.uk – they say they can do water wash plates from disc artwork – £48 for an A3 from a high res pdf (i’m on a Mac – PC pdfs should be OK). They weren’t very forthcoming about the actual plates they use so I am non-the-wiser about whether I’ll use them.
www.ppp-digital.co.uk/platemaking.html – sounds too good to be true – computer to plate but I have yet to chase them up…”
and
“Just to continue the thread on this for all UK boxcar users, i have a boxcar base which I have been using with the BASF WF95 HD plate recommended by boxcar. I have these plates made by www.lazertype.co.uk in Essex – the contact there is Russell Mowle. My last order was for an A4 plate with two colour seperations from a high res pdf – £62 inc vat and delivery.
The plate worked fine – I think they probably added a fine stroke on my artwork to make sure some delicate linework held up in the platemaking process (ie they thickened it up slightly).
The plate doesn’t come with an adhesive backing – the first time I ran one i used double sided tape to fix it to the base (pain in the arse to get off tho’) but since then I have obtained some of boxcar’s adhesive sheet which worked like a dream. If there are any people out there who want to go down this route maybe we could club together and buy a long roll of adhesive – it would work out cheaper in the long term.”
Can’t comment on the deep relief base but
hope this helps.
John Christopher
I have already mentioned a company in London, Alpha Engravers, I had good quality plates made by them.
Hi
I’m not sure if you mean blank plates or ready for the press ones so if its blank then try the Polydiam site they sell various thinkness plates, I found the metal backed the best. For ready to run as I live in Suffolk I use a company “Trentgate Anglia Ltd, 35 Eastern Way Trading Estate, Bury St. Edmunds, IP32 7Ab, phone 01284753500. You mentioned a embossed finish, have you considered the “Thermographic” finish.
Regards Norman
We have the KF 152 deep relief polymer plate
http://lymebaypress.com/photopolymerplates.php
we also manufacture The Chase Base for mounting to type height
http://lymebaypress.com/chasebase.php