History of Waterless Printing

( 1 ) Presstek PEARLdry

Founded in 1987 Presstek has successfully brought to market a new generation of color print production systems. Today, the company’s "dry" printing solutions today span Direct to Press (Heidelberg GTO-DI), PEARLsetter off press computer to plate system and the Quickmaster-DI introduced by Heidelberg at Drupa ‘95.

Presstek’s off-press plate imaging system has brought computer-to-plate dry printing technology to a wide variety of larger presses. Thermal platesetters from other vendors are capable of producing plates for eight page presses.

( 2 ) Toray Waterless Plates

Waterless printing was originally developed and brought to market by the 3M company under the trade name Driography in the late 1960s. Results with the product however, were mixed. Several problems were encountered both in the development of suitable inks for this process and more importantly, in the durability of the driography plate. After several years of R&D and many millions of dollars invested, 3M chose not to pursue further development of the product.

In 1972 Toray Industries, a large Japanese company specializing in synthetic materials development and manufacturing, purchased the patents for the driography product from 3M. Related patents were also purchased from the Scott Paper Co., who were working on a similar project.

Toray's experience in working with synthetic materials and advanced polymer compounds allowed them to improve on the original product design. After some five years in research and development, the Toray Waterless Plate was introduced at DRUPA in 1977.

Marketing of the product began in 1978 with the TAP type positive plate. Because the first plate was based on a positive working format, the product was first marketed in Japan. (The Japanese commercial printing market is about 95% positive working vs. the U. S. , which is approximately 5% positive). Cooperative efforts from press, ink, and paper manufacturers helped to support the product, and the overall market acceptance was very good.

The first North American demonstration of the waterless process was at Print '80, but it wasn't until the introduction of the negative (TAN) type plate in 1982 that this market could be seriously pursued. Initial acceptance of the waterless printing system in the U.S. was quite slow. There are several reasons for this: 1) memories of the problems encountered with the original 3M system just ten years earlier had left many U. S. printers unreceptive to a new waterless system, 2) a suitable source for waterless inks did not exist in the U.S. and 3) Toray's marketing effort was fairly conservative.

Until just recently, the U. S. printing industry had taken a cautious stance towards the waterless process, but in the last two years that situation has changed dramatically. Market conditions, greater cooperative efforts from related manufacturers (press, paper and ink), and a more aggressive approach by Toray and it's distributors have helped to establish waterless printing as a viable production process. Currently there are over 1000 waterless printers world-wide.

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