PRODUCT PORTFOLIO: Tried & Tested - Agfa Antares.(Product/Service Evaluation)

An entry-level B1 platesetter for the same price as a B1 imagesetter? Can it be true? Darryl Danielli investigates.

Cymbolic Sciences' PlateJet has been OEM'd at one time or another by Agfa, DuPont and Fuji. Of all its incarnations, the DuPont PlateJet/Agfa Antares was generally accepted to be the biggest seller in the UK with over 150 installations.

Agfa started to wind down the Antares in favour of its Galileo in 2000.

But the Antares' popularity is so enduring that Cymbolic Sciences, now part of Oce Display Graphic Systems, still manufactures several variants - the PlateJet Emerald, PlateJet 4, PlateJet 8 and the NewsJet. Nowadays, though, they're only sold in the US.

When DuPont launched its OEM'd CTP machine in 1996 there was just one PlateJet, a 940x690mm machine. However, by the time Agfa bought DuPont's plate and electronics business in early 1998, rebranding the PlateJet as the Antares, there were three: the 1000, which was the original PlateJet; the 1600, an eight-up machine; and the 1000XT, a high-speed newspaper model based on the 1000. All three models use internal drum architecture, and as they're visible light machines using a green frequency-doubled YAG laser, they have to be operated in a darkroom. All three models were blessed with the stunningly accurate pixel placement of just 0.006 of a pixel tolerance.

At the time of its launch the PlateJet was faster than most other platesetters, but CTP machines and plate technology have moved on since then, and although Antares is no slouch - imaging a 2,000dpi plate in 3.9 minutes, or 4,000dpi in 7.8 minutes - it's no longer considered fast. When Agfa took over the OEM, it sold the Antares with an Apogee Taipan RIP - the early DuPont PlateJet came with its own FireScript RIP but had the option of a Harlequin RIP.

The main secret of the Antares' success was its simplicity. Users just had to open a 'drawer' and load in a plate, slide the drawer back - that's all there is to it. The ...