| Begin warming alcohol or bath for plate processing.
Denatured Alcohol should be used. Bring to room temperature
or warm to touch. This will allow the plate to washout quicker
and more thoroughly. Cold solutions will take a lot longer
to process the plates. |
| If your using a punched plate, place the plate
on a table with the protective coating side up, round hole
in the front left corner. |
| Peel the protective coat off the surface of
the plate. Once this has been done you cannot restore the
plate, it must be used at that time. |
| Position your film positive, emulsion side
down; 3" back to center of artwork from the front of the plate
(end with small round hole) feel free to use tape (as long as its out of the image area) to secure the film in place. |
| Open the drawer of the AT-100/200 and lift
the cream film and place the plate and film, film side up
on the grid work in the drawer. If using a large plate, turn
it side ways to allow excess grid work to be exposed around
the plate. |
| Lightly smooth out the cream film over the
plate and push the vacuum on button. Again smooth out any
air bubbles that may exist. |
| Close the drawer and push the buttons on the
counter to 30 (50 for premium plate material). Again, this is setting the unit timer to reflect
30 seconds, push the exposure on button. This is a timed exposure
and the lights and vacuum will go off in 30 seconds. |
| Open drawer and lift cream film and remove
the film positive. All tape and excess debris should be removed. |
| Place the depth control screen over the complete
image (Important: emulsion side must be down, high gloss side
up). |
| Reset the counter to 30 (seconds) and again
cover with cream film and turn on vacuum. There is no second exposure with premium plate material, after the initial exposure of 50 seconds go directly to step 12. |
| Push the exposure on button. |
| Remove plate from AT-100/200 and place in alcohol
bath for 30 seconds. |
| Use fine paint pad to lightly and evenly wash
the entire plate surface in all directions for 1-1 1/2 minutes.
|
| Remove the plate and carefully place face down
on lint free absorbent surface. Do not rub surface with hand,
the image is very soft at this stage and any rubbing will
damage the image quality. |
| Place in 150-165 degrees F Oven for 10 minutes.
Don't short cut the drying time. |
| Remove the plate from oven and let cool. |
| Place in exposure unit on top of cream film
for 10 minutes. |
| The process is now complete. If the image needs
to be deeper, reduce the second exposure with the depth control
screen to no less than 20 seconds. To make the image shallower,
increase the second exposure to 40 seconds. |
