why boxcar?

Boxcar Press has established itself as the major pre-press & platemaking shop for letterpress printers in North America. We work with over 450 shops nation-wide and internationally to create death-defying polymer plates specifically for letterpress and intaglio. Our clients include shops of all sizes: artists, ad firms, fine press printers, universities, and hopefully you. Our expertise in file preparation is legendary. People have sung songs about our perfectionism. We are ink-in-the veins printers who care about beautiful printing as much as you do. In brief:

• We process high-quality photopolymer plates for fine letterpress and commercial printers nationwide, and we’ve gained a well-deserved reputation for ultra detailed and crisp photopolymer platemaking, a quick turnaround, and attentive customer service.
• With every plate order, you’ll receive printing proofs of your plates – so you can check the quality of your plate before you even set up on press.
• With Boxcar, you’ll receive personal and attentive troubleshooting. Before we make your plates, we carefully examine your files to check for pre-press problems. If we notice any problems, we’ll contact you and advise on how to fix your files.
• We run the most sophisticated film output software, process from the highest quality plates and films, and use the best European-made plate processor to expertly create your printing plates.
• We only use film designed specifically for exposing photopolymer plates. 
• We guarantee the quality of our plate processing. Send us your properly prepared files and a hard copy all at once. We guarantee that your plate will be identical to the file & hard copy that you sent in—or we’ll overnight you replacement plates at our cost.

In length: why not process your plates yourself? We’re glad you asked.

For those who enjoy scrubbing dishes, platemaking might hold some satisfaction. But fun aside, it’s difficult to make quality polymer plates yourself. A good washout is essential to producing quality photopolymer plates, but because handheld brushes are so small, washout times frequently are over 10 minutes per plate (and that’s you moving a small brush with constant motion). With this much exposure to water, the adhesive holding the polymer on the back of the plate starts to break down after seven minutes. This causes loss of detail because the plate literally comes apart in the water. Text is one of the hardest things to consistently process on homemade units, and we all love text, right? In addition, photopolymer is an expensive and finicky material, and the learning curve for processing quality plates is as steep as certain mountains we once tried to climb in the Swiss Alps.

Hand-processing plates isn't only time consuming: in the end, the quality can't compare to plates processed in a professional-grade platemaker by Boxcar Press’s experienced team of pre-press superstars. Many experienced and talented printers have tried unsuccessfully to make plates at home, often on homemade units. These printers are now convinced that polymer can’t hold great detail. In truth, it’s not the polymer; it’s poor platemaking skills that give photopolymer this sloppy reputation.

Boxcar Press guarantees a photopolymer printing surface that will cause no hassles or loss of detail on the press, and here’s a few reasons why. We ensure reliable and quick film output of your layouts because we RIP and process your films ourselves. Our Harlequin RIP handles the most complicated layouts you can imagine, and our Linotronic Imagesetter burns sharp and crisp films all day long. Our platemaking machines create the crispest plates because of their strong even UV light source—much stronger than handmade units. The washout is superior because our machines have 17 x 24 inch brushes (that’s big!) specifically designed to gently wash letterpress photopolymer plates. But in addition to great machinery, your files will be coddled and cared for by our pre-press experts. In the hands of our experienced plate processors, even the finest jaw-dropping detail can be transferred to a plate. You can ink up your press confident that your plate will print perfectly!