NASHVILLE, TN—”How did you print that?!” “What trickery are you using in your aniloxes?!” Looking to dispel any notions of sorcery in the world of flexography, Toolbox Tuesday wrapped up with Part IV: It’s Manufacturing NOT Magic!
Kevin Bourquin, of Cyber Graphics, and Bjorn Knutson, of FTA started by introducing Prairie State Group’s Dan Doherty, who kicked off the session with a lofty goal: spot color matches on first pull. For his company’s attempt to achieve this, it focused on data collection as a means to isolate downtime.
Looking at aniloxes, Doherty said the first step was to have an audit to review the quality of the company’s inventory. When considering new anilox engraving options, advancements in the market have made things much easier on press operators. Tools like an anilox scope help in ongoing evaluations. Keeping aniloxes clean improved setup time and plate life.
Doherty shared some statistics: From September 2014 to January 2015, two in three jobs (67 percent) were matched in two pulls or less,and 81 percent in three pulls. Makeready footage also decreased.
In closing his prevention, Doherty ended with some words of wisdom for flexographers in attendance: “If you can’t describe what you are doing as a process, you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Moving to color tolerances, David Hunter, from Pilot Marketing Group, spoke second. “How close is ‘close enough?’” he asked, before moving into a discussion of accurate vs. acceptable. Lower tolerances obviously being harder to achieve, it’s important to decide what’s acceptable with each and every customer.
Also on the customer side, be sure to know how tolerant how tolerant clients are with respect to a Delta E. Hunter admitted that customers who have a Delta E tolerance of 1 or less are going to necessitate long makereadies and lots of runs, ultimately meaning a printer is not going to make money on that client. By setting expectations, there won’t be any surprises when a customer sees a final job, and money will be saved.
Wrapping up Toolbox Tuesday was Windell McGill, from AVT, to talk camera systems in an aptly named presentation titled “It’s Not Just A Camera System.” He gave audience members a look at how far camera systems have come at the behest of printers. Offering the term “manufacturing process control,” McGill gave a look at what capabilities a modern system affords:
- Press control
- Defect detection
- Content verification
- Quality reporting
- Color measurement
- Defect removal
Presses are now capable of printing more than 2,000 feet per minute and there are camera systems that can keep up with even these speeds, McGill pointed out, further enabling to be available across web widths.
“If you can measure it, you can improve the process,” he said of the data camera systems can offer.