Hello all,

I have a Magnus 400 and use Kodak thermal gold plates and have an issue. when this is printing you can see vertical lines in the press sheet, it most noticeable in 30% to 60% screen. At first I told press the roller pressure was to tight, but they cleaned the plate and and I see them on it. My plate size is 18.0625x20.6875x.012 my oven setting are blower 65 Conveyor 42, and Heat 259. Have any of you guys seen this before, I called Kodak and they said they had no known issues. Please help a guy from Albany, NY.

Coons

So that's a Negative plate with prebake oven? I don't see that as much anymore.
Are there other plate sizes? would other plate sizes have the same issue? It was always difficult to use the same processor and oven line for large 8-up thick plates, and small thin plates, getting the oven to transmit just the right heat to both media...
You could also have a problem with the connection to the feedscrew on the head being loose.
I'd love to help you out or even visit, but unfortunately, with a Magnus or any Kodak/Creo device these days, you are reliant on Kodak for all support. I cannot touch it or communicate to it without a service dongle, that changes every 30 days or so.
Kodak has great service though, but it IS expensive.
So what you have there is a Lexus of platesetters, but one that has a lock on the hood preventing anyone but Lexus to even do an oil change!
I'm sure the salesman explained the benefits of this to you.

Kodak has been experiencing some "issues" with the Thermal Gold plates recently. If you have noticed that the boxes that the plates come in now have a White colored label on them instead of the usual Gold colored label. Kodak says that this has nothing to do with the plates and is a cost cutting measure, but, since this change happened, there have been MANY plate problems around the country. These lines you describe is one symptom, especially on the Magnus series machines. The "fix" from Kodak is to reduce your drum speed and power by about 20%, until the resolve the problem. They haven't resolved it in about 3 months, and the required speed and power keeps changing.
Of course it could also be other things. Dirty laser, dirty calibration sensor, weak developer in the processor. If the laser power isn't set up properly using FRESH chemistry and correct pre heat, it is possible to get these lines.

Dunno about the Thermal Gold. We use the Fortis PN from Kodak. According to the Kodak school I attended those vertical lines are normally an indication of a laser problem (most likely a dirty lens) with the Fortis PN plates.
Our oven heat is a little higher (270) and conveyer speed is 45, which sounds like fairly close to what you're using.
If you're using control software that includes "service shell" start it then issue the command
"head install on"
this will return a list of letter=number tables.
Look at them carefully, ignoring the s=number and the d=number columns.
the e=number column should be fairly low (in our case below 150, typically below 100) this indicates the laser focus distance. some excessive numbers PROBABLY indicates a call to the doctor.
Note* this test and these numbers are for the Kodak Trendsetter News series. They may not be representative of yours!
_________________
Dick Salter
Composing Supervisor
Athens Banner-Herald
706-208-2273
dick.salter@onlineathens.com