Presensitized
Printing plate 9 By Mr. Bob Gumbinner
In
the area where the stencil finishing operations had been I worked
with Century Engineering on the design of a line to make two sided
presensitized plates. This line had a slurry brushing section with
six top brushes and six brushes to slurry brush the bottom side. The
aluminum web could either go through this section or go above it
through an alkaline etch, rinse desmut and rinse tanks. From either
line the aluminum passed around a copper roll and into a sulfuric
acid anodizing bath. This time we used aluminum cathodes. If we
wanted one sided grained plates, provision was made to install a
rubber blanket in the anodizing tank which protected the bottom side
from being anodized. The web then went into the coating rooms which
had two coating sections and drying tunnels. From there it was cut
into sheets with a black polyethylene protective paper. As noted
above before this line was operational we installed two meniscus
coaters. At some point we bought and installed a Fuller Brush slurry
graining machine to supply rolls of grained aluminum to these
coaters. I know this Fuller machine was installed in a building near
the railroad tracks. We may have bought the building next door,
which had been used to store post office trucks and put the building
in back of that. We later bought the next building which had been
owned by a flour distributor. The purchasing and drafting
departments were put in the offices on the second floor of this
building.