Flexographic printing is continuously evolving, and the platemaking process is seeing this exponentially. This condition is caused by slippage at the point of contact and impression between the plate and the substrate and/or even the plate and the anilox roll. There is no need for gravure printing anymore—You can do it all with flexo. Our business has built an enviable reputation for high quality flexographic printing and Skymark never relents in its search for innovation and excellence. Flexography (often abbreviated to flexo) is a form of printing process which utilizes a flexible relief plate. The renaissance of flexo—the technological development of inks, aniloxes, plates, prepress techniques and printing machines—has now reached the level where anybody, anywhere in the world, can start printing high-quality flexo and compete with gravure printing. However, during the last 10 or 15 years, we have seen a rapid change in regional flexo markets. HD Flexo printing has raised the industry standard by providing the HD Label Printing quality of offset printing and the HD Flexo Printing quality of gravure printing at a fraction of the price. The development in all areas of packaging printing has been swift, which offers new possibilities to printers. Such a print must be made under standard printing conditions with a printing device following the flexo principle. Our state of the art flexo presses are ideal for efficient, high quality long runs. The printing plates are usually made of photopolymer, elastomers or rubber, colour transfer is achieved by means of a chamber blade system over anilox rollers on flexo printing plates carrying the motif. Flexo printing is a high-quality and very versatile printing process that … During the last decade, we have seen many products moved from gravure to flexo. Ink buildup can be seriously detrimental to the print quality. Download our free guide to find out how to Esko helps you with the production of high quality flexo printing plates. In printing there are many Specifications that build upon the ISO 12647-2 Standard. Look at what has happened in South America and what currently is happening in Asia—It is a tremendous change! Secondly, it seems the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) brand owners require their suppliers to move to flexo to reduce their environmental load. Nowadays, flexography and gravure printing quality are considered to be at the same level, which means there is no reason to compare which is better. Probably the two best advantages of flexo printing are the quality … These benefits are further extended by AVT’s workflow, archiving, and report options, which allow the automated tracking of quality for every roll, at every stage of printing and finishing. The printed image appears like ... Technology for Today’s Flexo Better, ... We are a privately-held company with over 50 years experience providing unrivaled customer service to the flexographic printing industry. We are bringing our customers peace of mind by maximizing their productivity and efficiency while reducing their costs and downtime. Flexo and offset are both popular, but they perform their tasks differently. We have extensive print and embellishment capabilities, which our experienced representatives would be happy to discuss during an expert consultation. This tremendous range of products means that today’s flexo production processes are especially challenging for quality assurance technologies. FlexoExport is known globally for buying and selling quality used flexo presses, digital web presses, and converting equipment in the flexographic printing industry. Flexo printing has become very attractive to brands all over the world. Esko offers both hardware and software to produce flexo plates for a wide range of applications. To test dry properties of flexo inks a standard print on a substrate is necessary. capabilities consistently growing and expanding as consumer demand shifts.. As the printing industry moves forward into 2020 and beyond, let’s take a fresh look at the technology available, how flexo has changed to meet consumer demand, and how 5 other popular printing methods compare. Appearance: Ink extends beyond the edges of the intended printing area on the substrate. Currently, the Asian market is jumping onto this development, and we are also seeing several European-manufactured printing machines installed in Asia. However, you should keep in mind that there are still special product areas where there are certain challenges due to the special requirements of the material or ink, such as special color resistance, lamination or a sterilization process. While this was indeed true 20 years ago, we should not keep repeating these same myths today. The inked plates have a slightly raised image and rotate at high speeds to transfer the image to the substrate. These two drivers are excellent, although being forced to do something is still a poor reason to start a better process, considering that flexo can deliver better-quality prints than gravure. AVT offers superior vision technology that delivers the highest level of process control and quality assurance for flexo production processes. Flexographic printing is significantly faster than digital, making large runs of labels more cost-effective to print on flexo presses. The press automates additional tasks in-line that are most commonly … If you know the letterpress printing method, you will notice that flexo printing is more of its advanced version because of the same rapid speed rotary functionality. There are two major causes for this development: First, tighter legislation bans the use of toluene in India and elsewhere in Asia, meaning gravure printers must change the traditional way of printing to use toluene-free inks (or move to flexo). When aiming for new goals, remember the saying “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.”. The costs of flexo printing plates is still higher than offset plates; Print quality is not that high as rotogravure and offset That is not surprising, as even some flexo printers are still underestimating their capability to print high-quality flexo. Therefore when ink buildup is noticed, the plates need to be cleaned because it can cause press downtime. Flexo printing has been improving over the years. ... (printing quality) to use a flexo system. This website uses cookies and other tracking technologies. We have recently installed a new Allstein 8 + 1 colour press with downstream unit that can enhance the printing with special finishes to … Flexo Printing. Flexography inks can print on many types of absorbent and nonabsorbent materials. Whereas flexo transfers ink from the plate directly to the substrate. In South America, this means machinery and plate technologies fully support high-quality printing, since modern flexo presses use thin plate technology and prepress is made with high-resolution imaging. The printing method provides a combination of quality, productivity, and flexibility. ). Esko introduced high definition quality to the world of flexo printing and the benefits are too good to ignore. Traditionally, packaging printers have held gravure printing as the standard to which they compare everything else. Flexo Printing – Pros and Cons. Flexo post-printing presses Corrugated box makers around the globe are able to exploit new markets by improving the quality of their flexo post-print. Flexo plates: reduce lead times and boost quality. By focus on development of new technology of printing and packaging, we are now one of the leading manufacturers of printing and packaging equipment in China. The problems we faced 10 years ago, such as dot bridging and the halo effect, do not exist anymore in high-quality flexo printing. BOBST has been at the leading edge of this technology since the introduction over forty years ago of the FLEXO -1575, and today our flexo printing presses set the standard for what can be achieved with the offline flexo post-press process. This eliminates ink buildup. Flexographic Printing - Axcyl Flexo Plate Mounting Sleeves ... Dimensional stability of sleeve is essential to guarantee high quality & consistent printing. These markets have jumped directly to high-quality flexo printing by adopting the newest machines and tools. Our products line includes Inline/Stack/CI Flexographic printing machine for label and packaging printing, Digital Finishing Machine for Label die cutting and Quality Inspection,Converting Machine for Slitting and pouches making. The problems we faced five years ago, such as poor color strength, poor fading to zero, solid ink porosity and even bounce, disappear when the newest technologies are used. Contact AVT today to learn more about our solutions for Flexo printers and converters. The advancements of the last decade have been impressive: Copyright © 2020 Flexographic Technical Association All rights reserved. Advantages of flexo printing. Based on today’s technological level, we can argue that if any of these problems still appear in modern flexo printing, the issues are related to the print jobs being done conventionally (the same way as a decade ago) instead of updating and adopting new technologies. (Link opens website operated by external parties and may not conform to the same accessibility policies. Whether you are in need of inspection solutions for the pharmaceutical industry or quality assurance for shrink sleeves, or any of a host of other flexo-printed products, AVT offers a full range of print inspection platforms that will suit your business’ requirements. In flexo printing, the requirements for product quality are high and, in a contested market, increasingly rising. By using this website, you are agreeing to our, inspection solutions for the pharmaceutical industry, Customizable sensitivities in Regions of Interest. Flexible Printing Plates In this case, printing “plates” are thin sheets of polymer material , laser engraved with an image of your digital artwork. Examples of Specifications in the printing industry are SWOP (Specifications for Web Offset Printing), and Gracol 7 (General Requirements for Applications in Commercial offset Lithography, 7 th edition). Flexo Printing. MPS. Slur is characterised by the smearing of the printed image: the dots are distorted in printing direction, typically elongated, and exhibit an oval shape. The third reason for the number of European machines increasing on the Asian market is obviously that when one company has successfully implemented an efficient solution, other companies start following the trend and implement those same solutions in an effort to reach that new benchmark. The remarkable capabilities of 21st-century flexography have made it the workhorse reproduction process for virtually every product category, and every quality level. FUTEC’s 100% print inspection guarantee: How to automate your quality control on typical defects occurring in gravure, flexo and label printing. Recent Posts. Flexo printing allows the inked surface to conform to many kinds of substrates, such as butcher paper, natural kraft, newsprint, chip and linerboard and coated boards. Advantages of flexo printing. QEA has the most comprehensive and sophisticated lineup of evaluation tools for flexography, one of the fastest-growing sectors in commercial printing. With HD Flexo Printing and HD Label Printing, high-resolution imaging on laser etched plates creates a textured surface on the plate, improving ink lay-down and increasing ink density on the final print. When we look at the world map of packaging printing, we see Asia, the Middle East and Southern Europe have traditionally been strong areas for gravure, while other parts of Europe and North America have been strong flexo markets. These markets have jumped directly to high-quality flexo printing by adopting the newest machines and tools. Flexographic printing uses flexible photopolymer printing plates wrapped around rotating cylinders on a web press. Technically, offset printing can refer to any printing technique that uses a printing plate to transfer an image to an intermediate carrier and then onto the printed substrate. The reasons for the regional differences are traditions and conservativeness—When people are used to doing things one way, the methods remain unchanged for a long time. Flexo presses have short set-up times with a minimum of waste and guarantee high-quality output; Flexo printing eliminates the need for additional work and cost. Despite all the good experiences and examples, there are still many brand owners hesitating to convert. Operator Focused, Results Driven. That is what this article is about. High Quality Flexo Printing Products. 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