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Cutting the cost of stencil production
Canon reseller, Revolution Transfers, has developed a chemical-free system enabling screen printers to produce screen stencils in-house at a fraction of the cost of traditional film stencils. The solution, which delivers a halftone screen resolution of up to 72 lines per inch, combines a Canon CAD large format printer (LFP), imagePrograf iPF500, imagePrograf iPF600 or imagePrograf iPF700, with a ColorGate RIP and screen film.
Based on Canon dye inks, the resulting image is said to be more opaque and scratch resistant than film stencils produced on pigment-based printers. This ensures image fidelity when the stencil is exposed onto screen emulsion using UV light.
Revolution Transfers managing director, Jan Edgecombe, said: "We're delighted to launch this bundled, Canon-based screen film stencil production system. The advantage with the Canon solution is speed and our tests show that it is 50 per cent faster than its rivals. It also delivers excellent image quality because its dye-based inks adhere to the film."
Each system is calibrated by Revolution Transfers during installation to ensure accurate linearisation and halftones. The ColorGate RIP, called FilmGate, can run on any PC and can process print files from any computer that runs Windows, Mac OSX or Linux.
