From Prepress to Press
With the creation out of the way, the cover was ready for printing. That responsibility fell to Catapult Print, the doors to its 56,000 sq. ft. Orlando operation open for only one week when it was tasked with producing 10,000 examples of the July 2018 FLEXO Magazine cover. “We’re the new kids on the block in some respects, and to be asked to print the magazine is quite special,” says Mark Cook, Catapult’s CEO, who previously was a director with printer Paragon Print and Packaging and award-winning design agency Equator, who look after the some of the biggest names in the fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) market globally.
Inside Catapult Print’s facility is a pair of Nilpeter 17-in. All New FAs (strategically placed with future plans to install several more, Cook reveals) on which the 2018 FLEXO Magazine Cover Project was printed. The 8-color press used UV, low-migration inks from INX International Ink Co and doctor blades from Swedev.
MacDermid Graphics Solutions’ ITP 60 plate—certified for Bellissima DMS—was used and imaged by the company’s LAVA Thermal Plate Processor. With the software, “we’re holding very fine features on our plate, and that what’s beneficial with our ITP 60 product is that you can hold really small dots on the plate,” says Jason Cagle, application development specialist at MacDermid and the 2018 FTA President’s Award recipient. He adds that while the screening used is new to the industry, “nothing is changing in the overall plate making process. We are able to use all the same equipment when compared to conventional options like AM or FM.”
Anilox rolls came from Apex International and its GTT Laser Engraved Anilox Rolls, which “eliminate any moirés or angle clashes from the anilox itself in the vignette areas,” according to the company’s National Business Development Director Joe Settanni. GTT has been tweaked and updated specifically for Bellissima DMS—“our tolerances have been shrunk in half and there’s been a slight change to its pattern,” he notes—resulting in it being the only anilox approved for use with the software.
Four rolls of Avery Dennison’s Fasson Rapid-Roll 8-pt. C2S Brite White paper (brightness = 94 T452, caliber = 8 mils) were run and cut into thousands upon thousands of sheeted examples of the cover, to either be “tipped on” to the rest of the offset-printed July issue or doled out to print partners to take back to their offices. Typical applications for the stock include airline or event tickets, jewel case inserts, game cards, book covers and shelf talkers.
Hitting the Runway
All eyes, measurement devices and loupes were pointed at Catapult Print’s Orlando, FL facility for the printrun of the 2018 FLEXO Magazine Cover Project, which took place in late June.
“From a print perspective, when you look at this, it’s all the things you think you can’t do on a printing press,” Mark commented. Just a few years ago, he says, holding the cover’s fine text and maintaining its solids were unthinkable. “This breaks all the rules. It opens a whole new world to you. And it’s enjoyable; printers love running this kind of stuff.”
On first pull, there was plenty of love to go around. Several onlookers immediately were drawn to details of the cover model herself—her skin tones and the shades in her cheeks and neck, the detail in the wrinkles of her palms and creases of her thumbs, the individual strands in the part of her hair and on the fringes of her forehead.
“The biggest thing, for me, is the detail you see in the face—in the eyebrows, in the hands—it really shows a lot more detail than you normally would get,” Jason points out. “If you look at it under a loop, you don’t see that rosette pattern like you’re used to with conventional printing.”
The FLEXO masthead, “great and punchy” despite its being built from 4-color process, is the first element that Mark says jumped out at him. Along with those details in the model, “It’s beyond what you’d expect to see on a magazine cover, especially on a UV flexo press.”
Representatives from FLEXO Magazine, Hamillroad Software Ltd, MacDermid Graphics Solutions, Apex International and INX International Ink Co traveled to Catapult Print for the run, where they tinkered with densities, troubleshot any issues that cropped up, and cut in front of each other to be first in line for a sample to examine. The teamwork yielded an exceptionally high-quality print, and according to Joe, is a benefit of working with a defined set of supplier partners.
“Really, it’s coming together as a group to provide customers with the best solution and that includes some troubleshooting. If there’s an issue, we’re all trying to put our expertise and brains together to find an answer,” he explains. “So rather than be in a situation where everybody’s pointing a finger at each other, we’re tackling this as a team to provide a total solution to the customer.”
And the end result, put succinctly by Mark: “Flexo is no longer the dirty end of the marketplace.”
A Bigger Piece of the Pie
You may have to completely ‘re-think’ how you currently approach flexographic printing.
But there are things printers can do to take jobs from offset, gravure and even digital, and convert them to flexography—an endeavor worth pursuing if for no other reason than practitioners of those other processes are angling to do the same. The press and its components have made tremendous strides advancing flexography’s quality and consistency, and software is proving itself equally capable of furthering that cause—empowering the industry to do what was previously undoable and do it not only well, Andy believes, but better than the competition.
“We have customers who have been able to secure new contracts for food packaging jobs which were previously printed using gravure,” he says. “The dramatic difference was in the cost to print the packaging (it was significantly cheaper than the gravure costs) while at the same time maintaining, if not increasing, the quality.”
Thanks to the Team
FLEXO Magazine’s staff knows well the content of its pages, but don’t ask them to run a press. This year’s project would not have been possible without the time, products and energy of the following companies:
Joe echoes that observation, noting that modern software can bring an ease of reproduction he says he hasn’t seen at any point in his 20-year career. “It brings quality for flexo printers to a whole new level. It’s been very exciting to me because it gives them the ability to compete with other markets—mainly offset, gravure and digital—where some jobs that would have been challenging to print flexo are not as challenging anymore.”
Fashion models do not smile when they are, well, modeling, a mannerism rooted in the upper class aristocrats from centuries ago and which is commonly explained today as a way to keep focus on whatever is being shown off—If a model cracked a smile, you would stare at their face and not their clothing. The model at the center of the 2018 FLEXO Magazine Cover Project is not smiling, but the hope is that any designer, printer or brand owner will be, after noticing the absence of rosettes in her skin, the smooth and flat tints, the lack of spot colors, the detail of the shelves reflected in her sunglasses, and, most importantly, the fact that they are staring at flexographic printing.
“We want them to smile. To smile knowing that, ‘Yes, this is a good thing, a very good thing for me, for my business,’ because it gives them a fighting chance to win new business and grow.”