An aluminum alloy and the preparation process thereof

Abstract

The present invention relates to an aluminium alloy and a process of producing the same, wherein the aluminium alloy comprises Al, Si, Fe, Mg, Cu, Ti and optionally other impurities, characterized in that the components are comprised in amounts by weight of: Si: 0.04-0.1%, Fe: 0.2-0.4%, Mg: 0.055-0.12%, Cu: 0.004-0.01%, Ti: 0.003-0.02%; any one of the other impurities is in an amount by weight of no more than 0.03%; and the balance is Al. The present invention also relates an article comprising the aluminium alloy, the use of the aluminium alloy article for printing plate, and a process of producing an aluminium alloy sheet / strip / foil for printing plate using the aluminium alloy.

Description

TECHNICAL FIELD[0001]The present invention relates to an aluminium alloy, which is useful for printing plate making, especially for (computer) direct-to-plate. The invention also relates to an article produced from the alloy, which article is, e.g., in the form of sheet, strip or foil, and to a process of producing same.BACKGROUND[0002]In the recent years, as the development of the printing technology, the printing plate is changing from pre-sensitized plate (PS plate) to computer-to-plate (CTP plate). Meanwhile, the printing requires stringently on the plate, where the CTP technology requires particularly stringently on the CTP plate and the properties of the aluminium alloy sheet, strip or foil to produce the CTP plate, such as the appearance properties, physical properties and adaptability to electrolysis. In particular, the current CTP plates are generally used for high grade of color printing plate-making. In order to ensure the plate quality, the properties of the plate substr...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

The present invention has various technical effects, such as improving the efficiency of heating furnaces, saving energy consumption, homogeneously dispersed intermetallic compounds, reducing electrolytic roughening, decreasing electrolysis energy consumption, obtaining a clean surface, improving treatment efficiency before electrolysis, saving acid and base, achieving high mechanical properties, and improving durability. These technical effects can be achieved through using a lower homogenizing temperature, homogeneously dispersed intermetallic compounds, and / or optimizing the process parameters.

Problems solved by technology

The current plate-making machine sets generally a thickness of 0.280 mm or 0.275 mm for the plate, then the variation in the longitudinal or transverse direction will affect adversely to the plate-making.

Also, the settings of the CTP plate-making device are usually unallowable for adjustment arbitrarily.

If the plate is too soft, the stiffness is lower, and the plate is readily bent to affect adversely the going up of edition material.

If the aluminium sheet is too hard, it is difficult to level the plate.

The greater the grain is, the worse the reduction of the screen dot and screen line is.

If the appearance quality of the substrate is too bad, the defects of the plate surface cannot be eliminated without a strengthened electrolysis, resulting in a greater grain.

If the substrate has a Ra≧0.30 μm, it is difficult to obtain a lower grain.

Then, if the plate has a poor planeness, the quality of the imaging by laser will be affected adversely.

It can be seen that the properties are not so stable, decreasing the printing quality.

The greater the grain is, the worse the reduction of the screen dot and screen line is.

The AA1050 alloy has poor uniformity for the internal structure, such that the electrolysis properties are undesirable, and the grains after electrolytic roughening are not uniform, resulting too poor reduction to satisfy the requirement by the high grade of CTP plate.

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