Agfa introduces robotic plate loader

Agfa has introduced a plate-loading robot that streamlines and speeds up printers’ prepress operations while reducing overall cost, the company says.

Agfa’s robotic plate loader frees prepress staff from heavy manual, repetitive tasks such as plate-loading cassettes of autoloaders or fixing pallets on the base frame of skid loaders.

“Heatset printers usually have multiple presses with different sizes, and therefore multiple CTP lines. Linked to that come so-called COMBO loading configurations, each consisting of a pallet loader and autoloader. The robotic plate loader replaces both configurations, reducing footprint by up to 30%, and making prepress operations more efficient and productive,” says Iris Bogunovic, product manager of plate & CTP systems at Agfa in a news release.

In a first phase, Agfa is offering its plate loading robot to printing companies using its Avalon VLF platesetters.

Scandinavian printed marketing solutions provider Stibo Complete is an early adopter of Agfa’s robotic plate loader.

Also, with the drupa trade fair postponed until 2021, Agfa has organized a series of free webinars from June 18 to 26 to show printers how they can benefit from offset printing innovations. A newspaper-specific webinar will be held on June 26. Go to this address to register.  

Agfa’s headquarters are in Belgium. The largest production and research centers are in Belgium, the U.S., Canada, Germany, France, the U.K., Austria, China and Brazil.

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