The present situation of Toray Waterless Plate

Abstract

Toray Waterless Plate was introduced for domestic market in November, 1979, and for overseas market in May, 1980. In the initial period, its applications were limited to specialty uses such as high quality art reproductions, dye-based ink printing, gold and silver ink printing, etc., due to some drawbacks in both the plate and the inks specially made for it. Since then, through several series of improvements, these drawbacks have been solved. And it is making rapid inroads into general commercial printing and other various fields of printing.
This paper describes its principles, properties, advantages and applications after briefly discussing the history of development of waterless planographic printing plate technology.