Production of non-tacky, smooth surfaces of photopolymer relief printing plates for flexographic printing

US4725528A · kind A · utility

Assignee

• BASF SE

Inventors

• Horst Koch · Havelsee, DE
• Klaus Jaeckel · Oberkirch, DE

Key dates

• Filing date: Jun 20, 1986
• Grant date: Feb 16, 1988
• Expiry date: Jun 20, 2006

Classification

• Technology area (CPC G): Physics
• CPC primary: G03F7/40
• WIPO field: Optics
• WIPO sector: Instruments

Abstract

Non-tacky, smooth, structureless surfaces of photopolymer relief printing plates for flexographic printing, whose relief layers are prepared in a conventional manner by exposing the photopolymerizable relief-forming layers of flexographic printing plates imagewise to actinic light and washing out the unpolymerized, unexposed areas with a suitable solvent, are produced by a process in which the flexographic printing plates are after-treated with a liquid medium which contains elemental bromine or is capable of forming elemental bromine, and then washed with a neutralization bath, one or more paraffinsulfonates, fatty alcohol ethersulfates or alkyl phosphates or a cationic or anionic surfactant possessing one or more perfluorinated carbon chains being employed in the bromine-containing, liquid medium. The relief printing plates obtained according to the invention are used for flexographic printing.