Marketing messaging today can be overwhelming, especially with flexo photopolymer plates  and the word “clean.” You hear terms like clean print, clean plate, prints clean, anti-fill, and more. It is safe to say all plate manufacturers want you to achieve cleaner print, and there are only so many ways to say it or even show it. You may have even seen our competitors using a stock photo we too have used to advertise our plates and technology (awkward). While we won’t mention our competitors by name, we all know improving plate cleanliness on press is a big benefit for flexo printing, but what does the “clean” really mean? Clean - The MacDermid Plate Definition First, if cleanliness on press must be improved, that means something must be dirty, right? “Dirty” print is a multi-factored issue and can be impacted by more than just the plate. Our friends at All Printing Resources (APR) did a great job explaining dirty print in their three-part blog post “Understanding Common...

Flexography is a printing process used for a large number of substrates and applications, as such the process colors can differ based on the pigments based on in their properties. Although there are color specifications, there is no general norm for density values leaving a number of open questions... What is the correct density for a printed job? Why do we find different values from company to company? Who is right? The reality is that in recent years a popular belief has emerged: the higher the density, the better the result. Ideally, an attainable, repeatable, and consistent standard should be established maintaining a correlation closest to the color proof. Image 1. Density values for different levels of reflectance.  Source: A Guide to Understanding Graphic  Arts Densitometry by X Right To optimize solids we must first review the basics...what is density, or to be more accurate, reflection density?  According to the Flexographic Image Reproduction Standards ...

Flexographic printing is continuously evolving, and the platemaking process is seeing this exponentially. Platemaking is evolving not only in the development of new and innovative materials but also in the technological improvements of imaging and processing equipment. Together these make a more efficient and consistent workflow to deliver high-quality plate that can consistently reproduce the information of a digital file in its finished structure. All of us have been familiarizing ourselves with terms such as high definition, high resolution, surface screening pattern, and flat-top dot, among others. The reality is that ALL suppliers in this field have achieved a synergy, bringing about a complete revolution making the flexo printing process more competitive compared to other technologies such as rotogravure and offset. However, in an environment that tends to become more automated, there are still uncertainties in the manufacture of the plates and even returns of the finished prod...

Bryce Benson’s introduction to EPIC plate technology In May 2017, during my first year with MacDermid Graphics Solutions, I visited Miller Graphics in Sunne, Sweden.   While waiting for my meeting, I ran into Jan Viberg, then with Esko, and now the Managing Director of Marvaco Sweden.   Never one to shy away from good conversation, Viberg asked quite frankly, “When’s MacDermid going to bring back the EPIC plate? That was a great plate.”  As I replied to many questions in that first year, I simply said, “I don’t know, but I can find out.” First, I had to learn a bit about the EPIC plate, so I called our headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. EPIC’s journey began in the early nineties. Flexible film printing struggled to attain a balance of low dot gain with good solid ink density and coverage --- capped plate technology was the solution. For the people who think “baseball cap” when you hear “cap”, the cap we are referring to here is a micro-rough layer on a photopol...