Energy Elite Plates

[johnny_jay]

Hello guys, it's been a while. Is anyone running Energy Elite plates? We will be testing some in the next few weeks for a  possible conversion to these from Amigo TS. We run 2 Avalon vlfs and will be converting one to run the Energy Elites.Anything we should be on the watch for?

Thanks,

John

[Joe]

Since we are getting rid of the Amigo TS AGFA/Oldham has been trying to get us to try the Energy plates but so far we haven't.

[johnny_jay]

I'll report back how it goes.

We are a short run shop and as of right now, we have runs that take 40 minutes to plate but 10 minutes to run on press. The energy elites are supposed to image must faster.

[Joe]

Hmmmm....I hadn't heard that. Interesting. Let me know how it goes.

[johnny_jay]

We just finished our first press test on the Energy Elite plates. Color came up very fast on press, press room was pleasantly surprised.

Seen some minor differences in the numbers on the run between the Amigo TS and energy Elite but that could just be that we started up on a cold press.

All in all, everything looked pretty much the same.

The downside if that we will not see the speed increase we were sold on. We were told that we would get 30% increase in speed. We did not see anything like that. Our Amigo exposure was 415 on the device but on the Energy Elites it is 400. It would need to go down to about 320 to see the time savings they said we would get. They said that our exposure was too low on the Amigo plates. If you look at the scale, it may be slightly low but on our second VLF, it is perfect and runs at about the same number.

[Joe]

We decided to not even test the Energy Elite and we have made the switch to Fuji LH-PJ plates. No big holes in the image area now on 1/2 of the plates and the pressmen love them. They hated the Amigo TS plates.

[t-pat]

We decided to not even test the Energy Elite and we have made the switch to Fuji LH-PJ plates. No big holes in the image area now on 1/2 of the plates and the pressmen love them. They hated the Amigo TS plates.

yeah I knew they would, but Agfa must've made a couple billion of these plates and probably are still insisting there's nothing wrong with them.

[johnny_jay]

We never had any problems with the Amigo TS, what problems did your pressroom have?

[Joe]

We never had any problems with the Amigo TS, what problems did your pressroom have?

The biggest two issues were random holes (anywhere from the size of a dime to a 10" hole) in the images and losing image on the plate at about 60K. Lots of plate remakes. Agfa blamed the random holes on or Luscher vacuum system but Kodak and Fuji plates image fine. They didn't have an explanation for losing the image during the press run.

[johnny_jay]

We ended up scrapping the Energy Elite plates and sending what we had back. There was no time savings and we would need to keep Replenisher as well as Developer on hand.

[David]

here we go...

got my fist load of Agfa plates in today.
We removed the Kodak plate line on Friday (2 ovens, a turner, finisher, processor) and had the Agfa guys in Monday installing the Agfa processor and conveyor. Will probably finish on Thursday when the Kodak guys come out to tune the lasers to the new plates.


Funs a poppin'

[DigiCorn]

you'll be much happier with Agfa once you get settled in

[Joe]

you'll be much happier with Agfa once you get settled in

I wholeheartedly and completely disagree. AGFA was a complete disaster recently when we switched and quickly switched again to FUJI.

[G_Town]

you'll be much happier with Agfa once you get settled in

Agfa sucked, we got rid of them for many reasons, plate wear, limited impressions, not UV resistant.

Tried their P970 long run plates and between the ablation and smell and nasty chemistry we said nope.

Using Triallians, not a whole lot better than the EE plates. Word is we are going to go witht the Fuji LH-PJ.

[DigiCorn]

No experience on plates larger than 26" or runs over... say 130,000 but the Azura TS has been rock solid for us.

Kodak was an utter disaster, mostly with consistency on screening and image wiping off plates.

No experience with Fuji in 22 years.