Presensitized Printing plate 7

Presensitized Printing plate 7          By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

We erected a wall on the north side of the B-line and transferred the stencil finishing operation from the Prospect Ave. school to this area. In June, 1961, the stencil finishing operation was moved to a building we rented on Saw Mill River Road. Among the chemists who worked under my direction there were Simon Chu, Al Taudien, Gene Golda, Ibert Mellan and several others. Ibert Mellan invented a way to use the formaldehyde diazodiphenyamine to be used a positive working plate. He did this by treating the coated negative plate with a ferricyanide solution. Gene Golda developed the process of making the formaldehyde diazodiphenylamine condensate. After we established Cellomer in the ironbound section of Newark, we set up a building to make this. I designed, selected the equipment and laid out the plant to make this sensitizer.

Presensitized Printing plate 6

Presensitized Printing plate 6              By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

I took some of the grained and also chemically etched uncoated sheets to both an outfit in Mount Vernon that was anodizing aluminum and an Alcoa plant in Kensington, PA and had them anodized.

We then immersed them in a zirconium fluoride solution and applied the diazo. When imaged and put on a printing press this anodizing treatment the length of run was substantially increased. I therefore worked with Century Engineering to design a line to be able to continuously anodize a web of aluminum. For the anodizing section we contracted with a company that made rectifiers to build two rubber lined tanks with ten foot diameter rubber covered drums. The cathodes were lead pipes that lined the inside of the drums through which cooling water was pumped. The electricity was introduced into the aluminum web by an 18 inch diameter copper roller. First, we used a commutator to connect the roller to the poser supply, later we used carbon brushes. Century Engineering proved the unwind stand; a six brush slurry graining section with rinse and the tanks after the anodizing section to apply the interlayer and rinse and dry. We used the same squeeze roll coating method that we used on the tank line to apply the diazo. This caused the web to wander so we installed an electric eye to adjust the pressure on the squeeze rollers to keep the web in alignment. After a year of operation, the ceramic seal on the shaft of the drums leaked. This was because when the tanks were empty the entire weight of the drum was on the seals. When the 15% sulfuric acid solution was added this lifted the drums up. We then ran this, the B-line, with the sulfuric acid solution only in the lower half of the tank. We obtained sufficient anodizing operating this way.

Presensitized Printing plate 5

Presensitized Printing plate 5             By Mr. Bob Gumbinner

Through one of Freda or Gregory Halpern’s brothers, who was in the pocket book business, we met Ed Harraz, who owned a company Century Engineering on Orono St., in Clifton, NJ, that made machines to brush the glass to be silvered for mirrors. He built for us a small one brush rotating and reciprocating machine. We installed this in the space in the Warburton-Ashburton building and experimented with using slurry brush graining instead of chemical etching for the presensitized plates. As soon as the 12,000 sq. ft. building on the 2 Ashburton lot was finished in 1959, Century Engineering built and installed the A-line. This consisted of an endless belt on which the sheets of aluminum were carried under four rotating and oscillating brushes with hold-down rollers. A 30% slurry of fine pumice and sand was sprayed on the plates before the brushes. The plates were transported on chain driven rollers through a series of sections were they were rinsed; then sprayed with either hot sodium silicate or hot potassium zirconium fluoride solutions; rinsed dried and the diazo coating was applied. At the same time we installed a second tank line for making the chemically etched plates. We had occasional complaints about the plates picking up ink in the non-image area. I traced this to the use of chromic acid in the desmut solution. I did not want to use 50% nitric which 3M was using. After working with Ibert Mellan and another chemist, Gene Golda, who we had hired, I found that sodium persulfate effectively removed the smut that formed as the result of the sodium phosphate etching. The quality control technicians would wipe the plate with a piece of cotton to make sure all the smut was removed. We could control this by slightly increasing the temperature of the persulfate bath. Also some people were allergic to Chromium compounds. Larry Golusinski, the son our plant manager, Leo, who was working on the second tank line developed a rash, and was transferred to the sales department.

More treasures from Al Wierling

Just received another contribution from Al Wierling in Florida;  Thanks Al!

Hello again Ken,

More pics with PC memories. During every national sales meeting, we had an awards banquet where individual and branch awards were handed out. Every award was earned but there were always plenty to take back to the branch for inside staff. Pictured here are Presidents Club and Inner Circle Rings which were for sales performance. Also a service award, this one, for 15 years service. I found at the bottom of my desk some of the Polychrome memo attachments. We received these frequently from the main office, usually attached to a report or occasionally with a nice compliment from Ron Muzillo or Noel Stegner. Also included is a Polychrome loop which after I left the company, never found use for again. Finally a Polychrome front license plate that Dick Hall had made for us in the Tampa branch which is probably my newest Polychrome item circa 1996.
Hope you can use these and have happy holiday season!!
al wierling

 (I do have one of the lope on my desk to supplement my declining eyesight!......Ken)

Presensitized Printing plate 4

Presensitized Printing plate 4

After we started to manufacture the presensitized plates we hired a number of chemists to do quality control and then to find another material besides silicate which could be used as the interlayer between the aluminum and the diazo coating. I worked with one chemist on organic coatings and with Ibert Mellan, who had published several books on chemicals, on inorganic coatings. He and I discovered that dipping the cleaned aluminum plate in a 2% solution of potassium zirconium hexaflouride at 160°F. made a good presensitized offset plate when coated with the diazo. We applied for a patent for this process on Dec. 29, 1958. We were granted patent #2,946,683 on July 26, 1960. We also received patents on this process in Japan and Europe. After the patent was issued in Japan, Fuji Photo Film, the main manufacturer of photographic film in Japan through the Mitsui organization licensed this patent for a one and two thirds per cent royalty and technical interchange. Over the years, Polychrome received over seventy million dollars ($70,000,000) in royalties While most of the improvements came from Polychrome, we did get from Fuji a formula for a positive presensitized plate coating which was an ester of diazo oxide with an acetone-pyrogallol polymer.