HYLOX - An All-Plastic Printing Plate System.

HYLOX is a new letterpress plate making system of interest to newspapers and commercial printers where duplicate letterpress plates are used. Its an all-thermoplastic system in which a high temperature plastic sheet is used for the matrix and another thermoplastic in the form of a molten preform is pressed against it to make the plate. The plate plastic is tough and durable and may be mechanically mounted on press by adapting the existing lockups. Special equipment had to be developed to obtain the high speed molding of both matrices and printing plates required to compete time- and cost-wise with newspaper stereotypes. A prototype installation is in operation for limited daily newspaper production. The printing shows unusually faithful reproduction of the original material HYLOX is the joint development of Union Carbide Corp. and the Hi Corporation.