Peripherals

Thermal plate benders
Some printing presses with automatic plate loading require printing plates to be bent. Polyester plates have to be bent thermally. Plate benders made by Beil or Bacher are recommended for four- and eight-page formats (e.g. Heidelberg Speedmaster 74).

Punching
A number of different imagesetters cut and punch the polyester plates for the printing press. Many imagesetters feed the material very accurately, enabling the printing plates to be output without internal punching.
In the case of imagesetters with reference punching, the plates can be repunched with a conventional hole punch or a special register punch (e.g. made by Beil Registersysteme GmbH).
With some imagesetters it is possible to install a register system with U sections for the printing press as an optional extra. In this case the plates do not have to be re-processed and re-punched.