Driving Innovation
Preston Neetzel, director of flexo sales, Koenig & Bauer
As the market for flexographic products continues its rapid growth, customers are being challenged with designs that are more complex and varied, and requests for faster turnaround. Now, technical innovation and efficiency are allowing customers to grow and prosper.
Game changing technologies provide a smart, streamlined, and interconnected environment. Think AR Data Glass, an award-winning remote support system that provides Koenig & Bauer remote maintenance specialists with the ability to experience, in real time, what a customer’s technical team can see and hear; and PrintTronic, which provides flexographic operators with a more efficient process to reduce makeready times, which leads to a reduction in waste.
Koenig & Bauer has earned a stellar reputation for offering precisely what customers demand, such as new automated systems and optimization to ensure workforce development and retention with such processes. Its Evo line of press models addresses the critical needs of flexographic printers to increase and maintain quality while sustaining the highest running speeds.
Today’s central impression (CI) flexographic presses are highly automated with production speeds of up to 1,968 fpm. Another important trend in our circular economy is to have a press with the smallest footprint to ensure it addresses the importance of sustainability, as well as being highly energy efficient. The importance of automated workflows is critical to enable efficient printing with environmentally friendly water-based inks, not only on paper and board, but also on plastic films. In order to prosper with today’s flexography, printers must be more efficient while at the same time be able to offer a broad range of printed products. Process controls are inherently critical to enable the finished products to stand out on a crowded market shelf and guarantee brand consistency through automated color control systems.
Koenig & Bauer remains bullish on the flexographic industry due to new trends that are driving innovation.
Change Agents
Leigh Carpenter, global marketing manager, MacDermid Graphics Solutions
At MacDermid Graphics Solutions, we have identified multiple trends driving change in the flexographic industry; one of the top trends is sustainability. The term sustainability means different things to different people. For MacDermid, it means working with our suppliers to use renewable raw materials, collaborating with partners to create a more efficient flexographic value chain, and assisting customers in integrating these new solutions into their workflows.
We understand photopolymer plates are just one piece of the flexography puzzle. Still, the processes of plate making and used printing plates are essential considerations to make the flexographic process more sustainable. Our partnerships with leading industry suppliers and our relationships with our trade shop and printer/convertor customers, all include a level of conversation about sustainability.
With partner suppliers, we see collaborative innovation as key to a more sustainable flexographic process. In Q2 2021, we will announce a new venture designed specifically to move flexography forward. With this venture, multiple partners will come together to create solutions for our customers that focus on the common pain points for flexographic printing. We see our partners’ technology and ours continually improving as we work together now and into the future.
For instance, our LAVA thermal processing system has evolved since we first launched in 2004 to a smaller footprint, just one consumable, and increased speed and quality. Thermal plate processing reduces VOCs in the plate making, removing solvent from the process. It also speeds up the entire plate making process by eliminating the drying step, creating a process utilizing less energy than other techniques like solvent and water wash.
Additionally, the conundrum of consumable waste is also a focus for MacDermid. We offer blotter recycling programs to our LAVA customers to avoid sending used blotter rolls to landfills. We are also in the early stages of launching a used photopolymer plate program, creating a circular economy for the use, collection and reuse of plates.
We want environmental sustainability to be the standard and intrinsically weaved into our everyday professional and personal lives. Our goal is to help our customers and the industry transform to move flexography forward.
Pit-Stop Mindset
John Crammer, senior sales consultant, Nilpeter USA
Prospering through efficiency is the life blood of today’s converter. Never in flexography has there been such an explosion of technological innovation and implementation at the press and press support level. Manufacturers have integrated precision servo-driven hardware with state-of-the-art software to drive label manufacturing equipment into the next century.
With the advent of this technological innovation, today’s label manufacturers find themselves re-thinking their workflow and personnel training. Gone are the days of relying on mechanical finesse and a good eye for color to produce the perfect label, time and again. Today’s press personnel, trained in the systems and technological innovation afforded to them with this new “smart equipment,” are the future of label manufacturing.
In today’s world, with the adoption of process control and standards and specifications, blended with color management software and fully automated press software, the resulting “smart equipment” has led to fully repeatable and consistent label manufacturing.
Converters who have invested in such “smart equipment” have found themselves able to optimize their production floor, taking full advantage of the efficiencies afforded to them by these “smart machines.” Employing a pit-stop mentality to the changeover process yields dramatic improvements in time savings, material waste and quality.
Building a system that supports this technologically innovative platform is critical to the success of today’s converter. Removing all questions from the pressroom floor and measuring the standards they have set assures continued success for the leading converters.
Nilpeter’s commitment to these processes and “smart machine” manufacturing is blazing the way forward in this truly innovative time. We are committed to supporting today’s converter and being your printing partner of choice.