Apex | Articles & Videos

Labels and packaging producer Reflex is one of the largest companies of its kind in the UK: “We seek to be on the forefront of innovation, investing in technology and people for continuous improvement.” In an effort to standardize print quality at its label division, consisting of seven production sites with multiple presses, Reflex teamed up with Apex experts to aim for better process control.

Both Apex and its customers need to measure aniloxes - but for different reasons! Control and consistency are the foundation for process standardization, ECG printing and  improved productivity in flexographic printing. The anilox surface – where ink meets plate – has always been the foundation for achieving high print quality on a repeatable basis “ideally” without constant process adjustments. Apex focused on this challenge and reinvented the basics of ink-to-plate transfer by creating the Patented GTT engraving. This advancement has resulted in a far more consistent anilox which is proven, both in print production at customers and internally with the microscopic measurement control possible from both Troika and MD control systems. These two systems validate that Apex aniloxes are produced globally with the highest level of accuracy.

Apex and VIV take flexo to the next level: Going digital on a flexo press may sound like a contradiction to many people. Weinand Van Kesteren however has been perfecting his ‘Smart Digital Flexo’ concept for over a year now. And he is convinced it will enable his company VIV to become a leader in producing high quality flexible packaging in short and very short runs: “We like to do things just a little different here.”

Flexo printers are facing many challenges every day, with flexo itself often being one of the biggest of them all. To further improve print quality and at the same time increase productivity, printers would require a level of process control that seems hard to achieve, given the amount of variables that surround conventional flexo. Apex now has a solution available close at hand, providing the consistency and repeatability that is needed for fixed palette printing.

Recent studies and trials aimed at optimizing Pantone simulation suggest that the fixed palette approach is ready to revolutionize the flexography and label industries. The change is due specifically to advancements allowing for unprecedented process control and consistency as well as the development of new tools designed to pinpoint which process parameters are failing so they may be addressed before problems arise.

From the time Printing has been accepted as a means of communication, the effort has been to transfer ink from the tray to the substrate. There have been consistent developments and the target has been to improve the quality of fixed palette or expanded gamut print, for short or long run. Different printing processes also developed to suit the printing of various substrates. All the printing processes have some common factors. These are:

Multicolour or fixed palette printing is generally associated with printing with 4 process colour inks namely CMYK. Sometimes it also uses additional Pantone shades, to produce a colour shade that is not reproducible using the CMYK process colours. This system has been in use for many years and is still in vogue. In many cases, higher density inks have been used to improve the printing of process colours by using higher density inks to produce the richer/darker colours. Though this helps to improve the richness of the colours, it makes the highlights darker in print which can at sometimes be drawback.