Today, all manufacturing industries face challenges that require changes from past business practices. Twenty, even ten, years ago the consumer was a passive actor who accepted market proposals. Now the end-user is an informed and sophisticated consumer who seeks differentiation, personalization. Today’s consumer has a clear understanding of the supply chain and the value it brings to key aspects of packaging, such as the environment and sustainability. Companies seek greater efficiencies and more productive use of resources. Because of this, Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies must produce better packaging while controlling their manufacturing costs and minimizing time loss and materials. Flexo's Evolution The flexographic industry is no stranger to this “new” reality and strives to reduce response times and provide packaging with greater shelf impact at competitive prices. All this PLUS the trend towards shorter runs as CPGs require their brand identity be maintained rega...

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...

Who's ready for some technical talk?! I hope you have your flexo dictionary handy... As photopolymer plate formulators, manufacturers and suppliers, we often get asked about emerging technologies and their impact on flexographic printing plate development. Sustainability, printed electronics, 3D Printing are just a few “buzzwords” we hear a lot about, BUT… UV LED technology may be the most “emerged” technology that we come across today. We’d like to take a few minutes to discuss how we, from the plate development and supply side of the fence, see this technology playing out and where we see ourselves standing in this growing field. UV LED Technology in Flexo Platemaking While the most common application of UV LED in flexographic printing today is often seen as the “on press” or print application area, the use of UV LED for curing flexographic plates has been around for longer than one may think. The use of UV LEDs has been most successfully applied via Esko in their “Inli...