How often can you say a technology from the 1960s remains competitive in nearly the same form today? One technology is liquid photopolymer for direct print corrugated applications in flexography. Over the past 50+ years, we have witnessed the introduction of digital platemaking and the continued evolution of water wash technology for sheet photopolymers. Each of these areas competes with liquid platemaking yet, despite these competitive pressures, liquid technology remains alive and well. While liquid continues to evolve through imaging innovations and enhanced processing equipment, it maintains its fundamental characteristics as well as its ecological and economic strengths. Along with the digital revolution, and the equally demanding sustainable revolution returned focus to liquid's unique capabilities. Working for MacDermid Graphics Solutions, I have the unique vantage point of innovating in multiple plate technologies such as analog and digital platemaking, as well as solvent...

To a consumer, product packaging may be a secondary consideration to the product inside the package. Companies devote countless hours designing a product, making sure it offers the absolute best value and experience to the customer. But let's take a second and think about the last time you bought a product from Apple, an iPhone, iPad, or Macbook, and you weren't impressed with the way it was presented in the packaging? Opening the box of a new iPhone is an experience in and of itself! Smart product companies know their packaging is more than a corrugated box, plastic bag, or folding carton. Product packaging is a powerful tool used to amplify a brand and build a connection with the consumer. Your packaging possesses a unique asset: it provides you with an opportunity to give your customers a guaranteed sensory experience, both sight, touch, and sometimes even smell. At the grocery store, a consumer can pass, on average, over 39,000 items while shopping. How does...

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 ...