Incremental printing of symbolic information – Light or beam marking apparatus or processes – Scan of light
Reexamination Certificate
2001-04-12
2004-02-17
Meier, Stephen D. (Department: 2853)
Incremental printing of symbolic information
Light or beam marking apparatus or processes
Scan of light
C347S253000, C347S254000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06693660
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method and apparatus for controlling an acousto-optic modulator, particularly in connection with an image setter system.
DESCRIPTION OF THE PRIOR ART
In a conventional drum image setter for exposing printing plates, a plate is positioned around the surface of a drum and a 45° spinning mirror (spinner) traverses the length of the plate along the axis of the drum (the “slow scan direction”). A laser beam is passed along the drum axis onto the mirrored surface of the rotating spinner which directs the beam along a circumferential line around the drum across the printing plate emulsion in the “fast scan direction”.
As the laser is passed over the printing plate surface, it is modulated to produce the half-tone dots on the plate for use by a printing press.
In comparison to the photographic emulsion used for film, the emulsions used for printing plates and thermal plates are less sensitive, requiring longer exposure times. The productivity of an image setter depends upon the image resolution and the exposure time for each pixel. Fast exposure times are desirable for increased productivity and therefore the spinner speed must be as high as possible. A typical spinner speed is 30000 rpm. Greater productivity can also be achieved by using multi-beam machines, that is having several lasers or one laser with multiple beams derived from it.
Each printing plate is normally used many times in image printing and the plate lifetime on the press depends on the exposure level of image recorded on the plate. If the exposure level is too low then the highlight dots quickly wear off and therefore printing plates are often overexposed to improve their life on the press. Overexposure can be achieved using higher powered lasers which are used to overexpose the plates in the minimum amount of time. Higher powered lasers are also required for low resolution images as the reduced amount of data allows faster scan speeds to be used and therefore more laser power is required to achieve the energy density in a shorter time.
In order to meet these power requirements, lasers having a power of several hundred milliwatts are desirable. Although modern lasers are often based upon laser diode technology, the direct modulation of laser diodes often does not provide enough power. A convenient solution to this problem is to use a continuous wave (CW) laser followed by an acousto-optic modulator (AOM) to amplitude modulate the power. The AOM requires modulation at the rate at which individual dots are placed on the printing plate. This is known as the dot clock rate and a typical frequency is 80 MHz.
In a conventional acousto-optic modulator, a collimated laser beam is focused into an acousto-optic crystal. To modulate the AOM in accordance with a pulsed data stream, the data stream is passed to an AOM driver which amplitude modulates a radio frequency (RF) signal. The modulated RF signal is then fed to a transducer which causes a pulsed acoustic wave to travel across a transverse direction of the crystal in accordance with the data stream pulses.
The focused beam passes through the crystal material whilst acoustic waves pass through the same material in the transverse direction normal to that of the beam. The acoustic wave acts as a diffraction grating which gives a first order diffracted beam at the Bragg Angle. This diffracted beam is passed through an aperture plate and is used to record the data on the printing plate. When the acoustic wave is off (not present) the beam is not diffracted and is stopped by the aperture. This method produces the desired modulation of the laser beam.
A number of problems are encountered in image setter systems of this type.
For high speed image setters, the “on” period of the modulated laser beam must be as short as possible and two limitations which affect AOMs are the width of the beam waist in the crystal and the acoustic wave velocity in the crystal. The rise time is a function of the time it takes for the acoustic wave to traverse the beam waist. A wide beam waist increases the beam rise time, in addition to any inherent rise time in the combined data signal pulses. The beam waist can be reduced but this is limited by the fact that small beam waists can cause damage to the crystal and therefore a loss of efficiency. The propagation velocity of the acoustic waves is fixed by the material properties of the crystal and therefore cannot be changed to reduce the rise time.
At high speeds, effects due to the acoustic wave velocity may become noticeable. In a typical image setter system with a 30000 rpm spinner, the rise time of the modulated laser pulse is usually between 5 and 8 ns. A single dot at 96 dots per mm resolution has a typical width of 12 ns and therefore it can be seen that the rise time is a very significant fraction of the dot width for high resolution image dots.
In particular, three undesirable effects can be identified in the recorded data which result from the use of a spinner and/or an AOM.
The first effect is that high rotation speeds of the spinner cause the beam to be smeared over the printing plate surface. Therefore horizontal lines are widened due to smearing. In addition, because the plates are conventionally overexposed, horizontal dark lines are accentuated which increases the dot widths for modulated laser pulses in which the rise and fall times are significant.
A second problem in image setters with acousto-optic modulators is that the acoustic wave velocity of around 4000 metres per second is similar to that of the writing velocity of the laser across the printing plate. Typically this writing velocity is about 1000 metres per second. The travelling acoustic wave causes a shift of the beam spatially across the aperture during the rise and fall times of each laser pulse. Due to the rotation of the spinner, this spatial shift acts in the same direction as the spinner rotation at one part of its revolution and in the opposite direction at points diametrically opposed. This causes a resultant modulation of horizontal line widths in a sinusoidal manner with a frequency of 1 cycle per revolution of the spinner.
The third effect occurs because an off-axis diffracted beam is used to record the data. The diffracted beam has an inherent ellipticity caused by the beam diffraction at the Bragg angle with respect to the zero order beam of the acousto-optic diffraction grating. However, as an ellipse has two fold rotational symmetry, the frequency of this sinusoidal variation is two cycles per revolution. In combination with the spinner rotation, the resultant horizontal lines are again modulated in width sinusoidally but this time at a frequency of two cycles per revolution of the spinner. In addition, vertical lines are similarly affected by the ellipticity but the effect is 90° out of phase with that of the corresponding horizontal lines.
Therefore these problems with conventional AOM based image setter systems, can cause a reduced correspondence between the original pulsed data representing the image and the image as recorded.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
In accordance with a first aspect of the present invention we provide a method of modifying pulsed image data signals for controlling an acousto-optic modulator in an image setter system in which a radiation beam impinging on a record medium is modulated by the acousto-optic modulator, the method comprising:
modifying the pulse widths of the image data signals in accordance with predetermined parameters to improve the correspondence between pulsed image data and the data recorded on the record medium; and
supplying the modified pulsed signals to the acousto-optic modulator.
The present invention conveniently provides a method of addressing the earlier identified problems of AOM image setter systems by modifying the pulsed image data to counteract these problems. As a result, the data recorded on the record medium may more closely represent the original pulsed image data prior to modification.
In image setter systems where the image data are recorded usin
Fujifilm Electronic Imaging Limited
Meier Stephen D.
Nguyen Lam
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