Why Buy an Imagesetter?

Here's a closer look at more current imagesetter initiatives—many targeted at the growing capstan market—which will secure that film output remains an integral part of prepress for quite some time.

Agfa is expanding its Avantra line of high-quality internal-drum imagesetters with the new high speed Avantra 44XT eight-up device, which Agfa reports is 50 percent faster than the Avantra 44S and more than 100 percent faster than the original Avantra 44. The Avantra 44XT joins the 44.5x36˝ Avantra 44S and the economy Avantra 44E.

For four-up requirements, Agfa's 25x30˝ Avantra 30 and Avantra 30E fit even Speedmaster 74 DI and MAN Roland 300 size requirements for computer-to-imposed plate-ready film workflows.

Agfa's 18x25˝ Avantra 25 family rounds out its internal drum portfolio with the AV25E, AV25S and AV25XT models, the latter boasting a 45,000 rpm spin motor for more than 80 newspaper pages per hour throughput at 900 dpi.

"In light of all the attention paid this year to computer-to-plate, we are seeing above-budget activity for Avantra 30 sales, and phenomenally high sales of Avantra 44s this year," reports Steve Musselman, Agfa's marketing manager for CTP and Apogee workflow systems. "With Agfa's ability to prepare the customer for CTP, the market is taking us up on our offer to install a four- or eight-up Avantra large-format imagesetter along with our Apogee computer-to workflow, in order to pave the way for a seamless upgrade to Agfa's Galileo digital platesetter."

On the horizon, expect to see a whole new line of Agfa-developed imagesetters next year that will complement the company's AccuSet and Avantra lines, according to Agfa's Peter Kushnieruk, product marketing manager for imagesetters. At present, the AccuSet series, with its 14˝ AccuSet 800, 1000 and 1500 line of capstan imagesetters, is appealing to the narrow-web flexo market.

The fully automated MegaSetter ultra-large-format imagesetter from BARCO Graphics features an output area of 47.5x63.4˝, as well as BARCO's Fast-RIP technology and Adobe PostScript compatibility. BARCO's GigaSetter features an output image area of 96.5x63.5˝.