Let's look forward to the development of the flexographic printing industry in 2024
Predicting the future is easy to make many crazy assumptions that never materialize. For flexographic presses, the important direction will still be the customer's demand for the best print quality, fast turnaround, and lowest price. These will not change, so new technologies must adapt to these needs.
Flexographic presses will have new options in digital workflows, plate making, plate/anilox roller/ink combinations, sleeves and tapes, press automation, controls and ease of use. Expensive technologies and features from a few years ago will become standard components that must be included in new presses, including plate cleaning, high-resolution inspection systems, auxiliary devices such as robotic feeding of reels and plate sleeves, and importantly, connectivity to a wider network.
prepress cleaning
Tresu offers the Printing Plate Cleaner, an automated non-contact system that cleans plates during production or at the end of a job for intensive cleaning of plates that will be reused. While the system was originally designed for the dirty and dusty tissue industry, it is highly valuable for corrugated cardboard, label and flexible packaging printers.
There will be more camera and spectrophotometer inspection systems than just those on a printing press or rewinder. Keeping the anilox roll clean and open is necessary for high-quality flexo printing, and MicroDynamics LLC offers a new, wider field of view mode on its Veritas inspection system that helps users detect the anilox roll over a wider area with one lens. This expands the field of view to twice the height and width, with the number of covered wire ranging from 120 lpi to over 1500 lpi.
There will be new plates and exposure systems to reduce solvent usage and plate making costs. This will make it more affordable for processors who need in-house plate production to improve Client Server levels, including plate imaging, machining, and dimensional cutting. AV Flexologic has automation technology ready for Packaging 4.0 before press.https://www.risedongsheng.com/
The precise depth adjustment of the cutter prevents damage to the surface of the sleeve, and the plate can then be installed without operator intervention, with tolerances of less than 5 μ, reducing press downtime due to incorrect installation of the sleeve and helping to expand the use of color gamut printing. AV Flexologic offers EasyReg markers that automatically set the plate to zero for faster preparation.
Flexographic inks are becoming more sustainable. People are switching from solvent-based inks to water-based inks to reduce emissions of volatile organic compounds. Some presses are designed with a mixture of solvent/water-based inks. Solar Chemicals follows the 5R sustainability approach - reuse, reduce, renew, recycle and redesign - when developing inks and coatings.
Sun Chemical aims to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, benefiting its direct customers and the brands they serve. Renewal trends mean the use of renewable energy and the formulation of products with significantly higher levels of bio-renewable raw materials, without impacting press performance or field of view costs. SunSpectro SolvaWash FL is a washable/deinking solvent-based flexographic ink that helps to improve the recyclability of shrink sleeves, thus improving the quality and yield of recovered PET in the recycling stream.https://www.risedongsheng.com/
There will be more standardisation. Pulse Roll Label Products has a range of Monolox anilox rollers to help processors maximise uptime and reduce ink consumption. Gary Seward, managing director of Pulse, comments: "With PureTone inks and Monolox anilox roller printing, we are delivering on our promise to help printers improve accuracy, efficiency and throughput by effectively using flexo printed labels more efficiently and at a fraction of the cost than digital printing."
Using PureTone inks and a custom hybrid database, printers can use this cutting-edge technology to print any spot color with just one anilox roller. This provides unprecedented benefits to print efficiency, providing high-speed preparation and reducing waste from ink consumption.
Printing platform
In the field of narrow web printing, Neubertec has cleverly summarized the characteristic factors of the next-generation machine on Labelexpo. Order changes will be more frequent, turnaround times will be shorter, and a wider range of materials and substrates will be used, while reducing the environmental impact. This will involve implementing sustainable practices, using environmentally friendly inks and materials, reducing waste, and improving energy efficiency.
These are the considerations behind its latest FA series, which features robust construction and innovative features for quick set-up, quick order changes and enhanced automation. NUMBERTEC has digital shadow technology that captures critical data on usage, performance and maintenance needs, an approach that is being adopted by more press manufacturers, providing connectivity to the processor's MIS as well as a wider network of customers and suppliers.
Across the wider network, Comexi is working with RE: to develop the Comexi-to-c. Hub software package to enable secure access to real-time process data. c. Hub facilitates the exchange of data across the entire production chain from printing, coating, compounding, slitting and rewinding, resulting in increased efficiency through enhanced visibility of production and synchronized operations. Comexi says its goal is to usher in a new era of connectivity and optimization for packaging producers and processors to make better decisions through data integration and communication.
Bobst has also adopted this approach, with Bobst Connect, a digital platform designed to enhance and enhance productivity. Summarizing these capabilities, the company's chief technology officer, Leonard Bardet, said: "The rich data generated by Bobst Connect has led to advances in efficiency, quality and productivity for our customers. It integrates data and digital services into a fully connected platform with built-in machine insight and expertise to overview and coordinate production processes and the wider packaging supply chain."https://www.risedongsheng.com/
The future of artificial intelligence
In 2023, artificial intelligence is generating widespread debate, but many flexo printers have been employing artificial intelligence and machine learning for years to improve operations. This will become more common as processors find it increasingly difficult to attract and retain skilled operators.
Machine learning algorithms allow presses to be set up automatically using the recommended initial configuration of web tension, alignment, press and oven temperatures, ink viscosity, anilox roll capacity, color separation, and speed, without the need for press operator intervention at the start of the job. This reduces the level of operator expertise, while improving machine efficiency and enabling more autonomous production, following offset technology, by setting and maintaining more complex printing conditions by the press itself.
The more assignments a machine analyzes, the more it learns and can make more effective recommendations. Machine learning transforms the current art of printing into a series of controlled actions, fusing the knowledge and expertise of successful operations to help overcome the skills gap faced by new operators. The next step will be to combine this functionality with video image recognition, thus enabling companies to apply the same theory to old and new assignments, which will also be on display at next year's drupa show.