GIRONA, Spain—Apex, Esko, Sun Chemical, DuPont, Cauchos Puntes and Comexi recently organized a technical day all at Manel Xifra Boada Technological Center, where a total of 10 experts from the six different partner companies joined in a practical session that consisted of printing a set of planned jobs, simulating a work shift.
All these jobs were originally printed in spot colors, but for this exercise they were converted into expanded gamut (multi-color) color separation. Previously, the Comexi F2 MP was characterized under agreed parameters of anilox, inks, plate and tape. The target of this exercise was to print in an efficient way and under fixed quality standards, monitoring step by step relevant specific data in terms of job cost: changeover time, waste material and ink and solvent consumption.
Through these analyses and evaluations, technical specialists reported that the expanded gamut system increases efficiency and achieves higher profitability and better quality packaging than a multi-color system. It reportedly offers solvent savings since EG printing only needs seven colors and, therefore, there is no need for wash-up in between jobs. This printing system reportedly reduces setup times and enables more jobs to run, increasing machine uptime and capacity.
During the technical day, the experts reported that expanded gamut allows many shades of different colors to run at the same time, which results in a reduction of the number of changeovers per day, increasing press uptime even more. Moreover, with this eco-friendly printing system, it is no longer needed to use the press as ink proofer. By converting spot colors to a fixed ink set, color matching is done during the prepress.
“Demand for shorter packaging production runs for targeted campaigns and product variations is increasing. Printers and converters need to meet these challenges in a time and cost-effective way, and EG system is the proper way to achieve it,” explains Comexi Technological Center Manager Albert López.