Kodak recently announced availability of the Kodak Sonora UV process-free plate, the latest addition to the company’s process-free technology portfolio, in many regions of the world. Sonora UV Plates expand the capability of Kodak’s process-free plate portfolio to an even wider group of print service providers. They are capable of delivering longer run lengths for UV print applications than any other process-free plates, up to 30,000 impressions. This allows printers to take advantage of both the environmental and economic benefits of process-free plates and the expanded set of opportunities associated with UV technology, including flexibility, high print quality and faster drying times.
“Kodak is committed to investing in R&D that advances the capabilities of print service providers and equips them to offer a wider range of applications and tackle new markets while accomplishing all that in the most environmentally way possible,” Richard Rindo
“As far as we’re concerned, there’s no alternative to Kodak’s process-free plate when it comes to UV printing. We simply don’t have room for a plate processor, and these plates have the general advantage of less effort and lower costs for plate making as well as more stability,” says Torsten Gröger, production director at cre art Die Werbeproduktion in Fulda, Germany. “Thanks to the Kodak Sonora UV process-free plate and the extensive capabilities of our press, which is equipped with numerous UV and print enhancement extras, we can produce complex and demanding jobs on any substrate. The level of creativity and quality is very high, and this kind of job would have been technically impossible a few years ago. The Sonora UV process-free plate enables significantly longer run lengths with at least twice as many impressions as we get from the Sonora XP plate.”
Sonora UV is based on technology used in the popular Sonora XJ process-free plate that has been commercially available in Japan since 2016. In the pressroom, Sonora Plates, like the flagship XP version, work with existing press set-ups and sequences. They are capable of running on sheetfed, heatset web, and commercial coldset presses and can run applications such as commercial print, newspapers, offset packaging, and UV. For packaging printers, the Sonora UV Plate is a very exciting development, as it now meets the rigorous demands of UV print applications increasingly used by today’s packaging and commercial printers, but it will also enable printers to take advantage of both the environmental and economic benefits of process-free plates.
“Kodak is committed to investing in R&D that advances the capabilities of print service providers and equips them to offer a wider range of applications and tackle new markets while accomplishing all that in the most environmentally way possible,” said Richard Rindo, general manager – worldwide offset print and vice president of print systems division, Kodak. “Over 3,000 customers around the world are yielding significant cost and environmental benefits from Sonora and with Kodak manufacturing facilities now located in the USA, Europe, Japan and China, printers across the globe benefit from faster supply, support and customer service.”
