| abstract |
New coatings for lithographic printing plates are imagewise exposed to radiation and then treated directly with water to remove unexposed areas of the coating. The coating comprises a polymer, monomer and / or oligomer, a polymerization or crosslinking initiator, a stabilizer, and a dye or pigment so that after imaging, the non-imaging resin area becomes the resin of the coating Without dissolving the components, they are removed from the plane by water penetration in the non-imaging coating to form a lithographic printing plate with sharply contoured images and non-image areas. Stabilizers are solvent soluble, partially water soluble, non-polymerizable organic components that allow the coating to be removed by water in the non-crosslinked areas. |