LOUISVILLE, KY—Mark Cook, the founder and CEO of Catapult Print, recently recognized that the lost time incurred by poor anilox and parts cleaning was a pressure-point towards the company’s “zero downtime” objective.
Some of the ink used in high-quality printing, such as metallics, can prove difficult to clean off the anilox using traditional methods alone. The former anilox cleaner that Catapult used was causing some tension toward its tight production goals, which in turn slowed down the efficiencies driven by their advanced make-ready procedure.
According to Chris Mountain, factory manager at Catapult Print, “We have strict tolerances for color matching; we match all of our inks to Pantone digital library and our target is under DE 2. With the old anilox cleaner, since they were not cleaned properly, we were noticing weaker colors and spitting issues. This was causing at least a few hours of downtime a week as we always take the time to make things right before the job is printed.”
The cleaning portion of the production chain was the weak link, with too much valuable time being spent trying to clean aniloxes that never really were getting clean. Its previous cleaner would only allow for one anilox to be cleaned at a time. Not only was this time consuming for the team, it was also inefficient.
Mountain said, “We were not happy with the previous cleaner due to the various issues. We had contact with Keith Young at Flexo Wash and he suggested we trial the machine for a week. When he came to install the machine for trial, we decided to put it to the test with our dirtiest anilox, which was badly stained and the old machine could not get clean. After about 20 minutes in the Flexo Wash anilox cleaner, it came out like brand new and we knew we would need to purchase one right then!”
Catapult purchased the Flexo Wash Handy 2×2 anilox cleaner. This anilox cleaner allows for four aniloxes to be cleaned in a single cycle, removing all unnecessary downtime and producing like-new parts after every wash.
In addition to the troubles with anilox cleaning, there were other parts that required dedicated maintenance as well. Catapult had a specific employee responsible for cleaning chambers and other press parts throughout the day.
Catapult decided to purchase the PK Eco Maxi WR parts washer after seeing the positive results from the Flexo Wash anilox cleaner.
Statistics before Flexo Wash:
- The company cleaned one to give anilox rolls per day, sometimes running the same anilox for hours as it wouldn’t be clean enough
- Spent $13,000 a year on cleaning solutions
- The former anilox cleaner could only clean one anilox at a time
- To clean an anilox roll, it would have to be run many times through the cleaner, as it was not clean enough on the first pass
- The company had a few hours of downtime a week dealing with dirty anilox rolls
- Parts were cleaned manually by hand, by one dedicated employee
- Cleaning parts would consume an entire shift
Statistics after Flexo Wash:
- The company cleans 10-20 rolls per day
- Spends $6,000 a year on cleaning supplies
- Flexo Wash anilox cleaner cleans four rolls at the same time and they are totally clean after one cycle
- Most anilox rolls are cleaned once a week
- Anilox rolls that are used for metallics, adhesives and/or whites are washed after each use
- Flexo Wash machines have completely eliminated weak colors and spitting issues with the ink. Ink downtime is down to nearly zero hours a week due to how well the aniloxes are cleaned
- The dedicated parts washer employee is being utilized in other departments. Time spent cleaning the chambers is significantly reduced to two thirds of the original time.
Cook recognizes the importance of minimal downtime in the printing process, and a weak cleaning system was contributing heavily to that downtime. By modernizing the “housekeeping” elements of the process, keeping both aniloxes and parts clean and on a cleaning schedule, the results are excellent. Consistent high-quality color, even production and little-to-no downtime are all the benefits of a Flexo Wash cleaning system.
Mountain had some words of advice for other converters who are wondering if they should invest in a Flexo Wash cleaning system: “To others considering investing in a Flexo Wash cleaning system, I would fully recommend and go for it! This has been one of the best decisions we’ve made regarding machinery and we are very happy with the investment.”