You do not have to compensate for distortion that occurs when plates are mounted on a ThermoFlex device for imaging. You only need to compensate for the distortion that occurs when plates are mounted on press cylinders.
ThermoFlex devices automatically compensate for distortion that occurs when the plate is mounted for imaging. In the case of ThermoFlex Wide devices, the compensation is automatic—an algorithm in the device firmware uses autofocus data to adjust compensation. In the case of ThermoFlex Narrow and ThermoFlex Mid devices, you must manually calculate compensation values in advance and load the resulting distortion tables into the device controller. This is done by a Kodak service representative at the time of installation. Kodak applications or flexo specialists are not involved with compensation for device distortion.
Device compensation acts to zero out distortion so that the plate is imaged dimensionally accurate, just as if it was imaged flat. Because this compensation makes final output accurate, it doesn't matter in which orientation plates are imaged. They can be freely rotated in 90-degree increments in TIFF Assembler Plus or TIFF Downloader without adverse effects, and different plates on the ganged surface can have different orientations. Because device compensation is handled by firmware, it is transparent to users and doesn't need to be compensated for when outputting from Prinergy and Prinergy Evo.