Polychrome Plate History by Mr. Robert Gumbinner.....A machine

Mr. Gumbinner sent me this early history of plate making at Polychrome.      This arrived on July the 4th. and was a welcoming July 4th present.       His article is quite long covering A machine to D machine.     To make it easier to read, the article is split into individual machine along the history.    These are the early Polychrome's history only known to early pioneers like Mr. Gumbinner and I am delighted to have this contribution from him.        Thank you very much Mr. Gumbinner for providing these valuable notes.

A machine

In early 1950 Elmer Deal of Alumilith came to Polychrome from Alhambra California and told us he brought the idea of presensitized plates to 3M. We agreed to pay him five cents for each aluminum 10 by 16 wide plate and one cent for each paper presensitized plate. Fred Hozeny and I went to Alhambra and copied their hand carried rack line and formulas, Planning ahead we put up a new building on the Ashburton Ave. site adjoining the 2500 sq. ft. gas reducer building; in which we built a section for an aluminum presensitized tank plate line,

Besides the Alum-O-Lith process we wanted to work on a grained plate. A brother of Mr. Halpern and his wife Freda Bonime was in the pocket book business. He directed us to Ed Harris of Century Engineering on Orono Street in Clifton, New Jersey who made equipment to make glass mirrors for pocket books, For us he made a unit with two circular nylon bristle brushes which rotated at about 300 RPM and oscillated about 30 times a minute. The aluminum sheets were carried on a belt under the brushes while a slurry of about 33% fine sand and pumice were sprayed on the aluminum sheets. While the building on 2 Ashburton was being constructed it was installed in the basement of a supermarket at the corner ofAshburton and Woodworth Aves. Proven satisfactory, Century Engineering built the A machine with 6 rotary nylon brushes on a belt followed by a series of sections with rubber covered rollers which were sprayed with water or hot silicate or potassium zirconium fluoride solution and rinses. After drying the aluminum plates were coated between squeeze rollers with diazo solution.