Burned first plate Please Help I am not sure what I did wrong please.

OK I am not a pressman I am an electrician I bought my ryobi 3302 for a ministry my son and I are starting. I have a Brown plate burner it will hold 5 plates at once. It has a 1500 watt bulb. I bought some myrid film to print on with a laser of which I printed on it with my HP 5100. Ok I took a plate and placed it on it with first cutting out my lined sheets (forgot what they are called) now to the point I put the film on the plate I turned it one for one and a half minutes. I could see the letters on the plate thought it burned just fine was happy I did it. I put some 2 in 1 developer on it rubbed it one let it set for 10 seconds and began washing it with the developer and water my problem is my words washed off it never burned into the metal. Why what did I do???) Help please as I am trying to print tomorrow Sunday morning as I am working 5-10's and an 8. I have only tomorrow to try and print something. Please throw me some pointers as to what I am doing wrong someone must know exactly what I am not doing right?. Thank you so much for input from you taking your time to give me some pointers. THANK YOU!

 

Your film did not blocked the light, you need to experiment with intencity/time of exposure. I was just wondering... I get to read your posts once upon a time... What is it you go by? Me, for example, I am not a pressman, just like you but back in years, I bought a simplest press, actually 2, ab dick 360cd and multi 1250, both with kompac dampeners, HP 5000 and later 5100 served me as platemaker for years and I am thinking now that if it would not be for simplicity of a kompac and platemaking with HP, I would have hated all this from the beginning... rubbing plates with chemicals ughhhh. You asked a lot of questions a received plenty advice, now you went 20 years back in platemaking, why not just make a poly plate out of your hp? The ryobi 3302 is not a learner press but it would be pointless to advice against - you already have it... Anyway, I had never burned a plate in my life and hopefully won't have to but here is what I know (point is to accumulate info before making decision and getting hardware in) you bur the plate in parts, cascade sort of way, block the film completely over except for a strip, do this repetadly with different time / intencity setting, note which area where exposed with which setting, develop the plate, whatever are works the best, corresponding setting would be optimal one...

 

It sounds like you didn't burn the plate long enough. Or the 2in1 developer is not compatible with the brand plates you're using. But it does sound like it just needs more time to burn. Also when you develop the plate don't let the chemistry sit on the plate for extended time. Just keep wiping it until the non burned areas come off. It should start to develop and remove the coating pretty much right away. You'll need to experiment with your exposure times till you find the sweet spot. There is a lot more to this when you get into screen and halftones. But for now just find a good time for line type to get you going. BTW the yellow paper sheets are called masking sheets.

 

OK great thank you much I will go play with this now will update to what I find.

 

As for why I don't use poly plates that is simple for a couple reasons one is I find ink soaks into them and will not come off or clean up and puts marks on my paper. I tried many things with same resaults in fact I must still have over a hundred poly plates left. The other is I will be printing all process and poly is not good for that. As for why I burn plates now well when I bought my 3302 it came with the plate burner and an itek 2800 press and a large hydrolic paper cutter guy retired wanted it all gone. I have no problem burning a plate just because nothing is like printing on a metal plate. Metal plates I learned is the way to go and they clean up real easy when running on the press with out getting ink saturated into them. I have tried prepping the poly's before using yes. I just paid for my film which I am waiting for to do my process colors but using the hp and burning a plate is figuring this out so when my good film comes next week I will be ready and I have some single color stuff to print which is why I am printing on film for this. I will not be printing the film for the process. Thank you for your input I appreciate it. I am happy to have my plate burner very much so I cannot afford right now something that is direct to metal plates. I will try and always use metal plates as they are much more forgiving than a poly

 

WHAT DID I DO TO THE PLATE WHY DID IT COME OUT LIKE THIS???? Do I have the wrong kind of plate? Is this a negative plate and I need positive? Or the opposite? I took a picture I uploaded ink prints where I don't want it I need the letters to store ink what do I do to fix this? Thank you and thank you. I printed a bit with it how EASY compared to poly plates. After using this metal plate I cannot use poly's anymore.

 

Kinda tough to tell but it looks like you printed your film out on a laser printer and tried it as a negative. As a result the light from the plate burner went right through the dark portion of your film as its not dense enough to hold back light. First off you should be using a gray scale to burn a plate, to determine if your burning too long or too short of a time. The plate mfg has specs to tell you if you need a solid 4 or 6 on a gray scale. But even with that correct, you cannot make a piece of film from a laser printer and expect it to hold out the light.

 

When you are making a film, you should print it in reverse, i.e. non imaged areas should be black on your film...
There are positive plates chemistry available on the market that work other way around.
As of printing process, the HP5100 is not suitable for Film Making just as it is not suitable for Poly Plate making, it does not print halftones correctly regardless Direct to plate or Direct to film. A decent Inkjet with RIP (Like Epson 4880) could be much better choice for film making, I say with RIP because you'd need to control a density and other key settings and that is what a RIP is for. Besides that, there are plenty of systems on Ebay like AB Dick DPM 34 that can make 8 mil poly and being created to output offset plates are much much much better than HP that was never meant to make plates much less to output plates suitable for a 4 color process, they cost only $2-3- 4K. You may dispute whatever I say but at the end of the road you will come to this anyway - no matter how you slice it, HP5100 is not suitable to do what you plan on doing, If you can't manage to output a simple poly plate that meets your expectations, there is no point to get it involved in outputting plates for 4cp.

 

I understand what your saying thank you for your input I learn from it I see now how I need to reverse my printing to get the plate right. Where can I get this grey scale strip at? I have my art work for 4 color coming to me from a company this week what I am doing now is only one color. Thank you

 

Check with your plate supplier they should be able to point you in the right direction.

 

I was looking at the epson for the rip I see all rip printers are expensive but not read bad for that epson can I print onto film with that for 4 color and be ok? If so I may get that epson thank you

 

You were looking for the the EPSON + RIP, at least that I was trying to say. I will definitely work much better than HP 5100 plus you can print other things on it. The easier would still be AB Dick DPM as it is a complete system - you send the file - press ready plate comes out, no film position, developing, especially by hand...

 

Hi that ab dick dpm I like that. It is the way I want to go for sure. Maybe I can get it this summer. Question does it do metal plates? If so I think you sold me on this unit

 

No, it does polyplates from the roll. It can make a 8mil thick plates that are good for 20,000+ impressions and Screening and durability is much better suited for 4 color process. Question is that as you considered to be an interesting solution why not google it and read more ....

 

Hey Sticky
when you get your film strip it into your masking sheets, Line all 4 negs to the same ruled line on the masking sheet I asume you are going to run color bars so make sure those are cut out of the masking sheet along with your crop marks. if you dont print the color bars or crops you will NEVER get your plates registered i burn my plates for about 2 1/2 min. that should get you going.

 

i rarely use color bars or crop marks and i can run 4 color all day, its all in the operator and what you prefer just find what works best for you

 

Ziggy
Sticky is not a pressman and he's never run process before, so he had better have something to line up to.
He's not going to use a densitometer to read values, it would just be good for him to keep his ink even and have someplace to start registering to.
I've been running presses since 1969 and i can run without bars or crops but i still prefer to have them, depends on the job there are just some jobs you need to be able to read density and check dot gain.

Print Happy

 

Looks to me, from the image that you've got a subtractive plate. This means that the entire plate surface has emulsion and that the light burns away the non image areas, as opposed to a positive working plate where the light exposes the image areas. Subtractive working plates in my opinion, are favorable to positive working plates for most applications. That said I would look into a longer exposure. Also be sure that your using the correct developer for the plate you are using. My suggestion for developing would be to pour a decent puddle of developer on to the exposed plate and use cotton pads to work the developer solution in a figure 8 motion all over the plate until the non image areas become clean. DO NOT try to be cheap with your developer to save chemicals. Once you begin the developing process do NOT stop until the entire plate is clean. DO NOT let the developer dry on the plate. At this point you need to rinse if off thoroughly with fresh water until no traces of developer remain on the plate. The next step would be to use a preserver on the developed plate. My preference for preserver is a product called AGE. AGE is a mixture of Asphaltum, Gum, and Etch. Do the same with the AGE as you did with developer. Figure 8 motions until entire plate is coated. While the AGE is still wet you need to smooth it out with a piece of cheesecloth or something soft. The last step would be to cover the exposed and developed plate with something to protect it from scratches and light until your ready to mount the plate on press. The ideal thing to cover the place would be the slip sheets that come in between each plate in a box.