Flexible CTP Plate Making Application Success Stories

ITW is an Austrian company active in the world. Behind it is a large technology group company in the United States. Its 2003 sales amounted to 9.3 billion US dollars. The group has 600 companies and employs 52,000 people in total.

ITW is the inventor of shrink labels and an international market leader in this field. ITW is not limited to printing, but also produces the films needed for printing and machines for producing labels. Shrinking labels is a growing area. For this reason, a UK sleeve manufacturer was taken over by King Lynn & Wakefiled two years ago. ITW has established production bases in the United States, Brazil, South Africa, the United Kingdom and Austria, which are supplied by Austria to all countries in the east of the Atlantic Ocean and Europe to Asia. The customers are mainly mineral water and soft drink manufacturers and chemical or dairy processing companies.

Zero inventory production

The Austrian ITW company was established 10 years ago in the field of green investment in order to meet the growing demand for labels in the Eastern Hemisphere. ITW is very close to the customer and can now provide zero inventory for its customers in various markets. Inventory is not specified in the production plan of ITW. ITW is committed to improving the competitiveness of its customers and helping them to open up new markets and achieve this through an integrated approach. The program extends from the technical evaluation of film production to digital prepress preparation and printing, and the dedicated pre-sales and after-sales service departments are responsible for customer satisfaction.

The Austrian factory has 96 employees. The implementation of three shifts of production and a seven-day working week system. Three satellite flexo presses were used, with print widths of 1270mm, 1285mm and 1610mm. Two sets of rotary machines using sleeve technology are respectively equipped with ten color groups and eight color groups. Multi-color group can print more patterns, thus shortening the adjustment time. In order to achieve rapid adjustment, the company's third machine was also converted to a sleeve system at the end of last year.

Promotional labels

In the past 10 years, the global demand for labels has undergone great changes. The trend has clearly been to the development of promotional labels, and the number of prints has also been greatly reduced. In addition, special effects such as temperament, fluorescence, and embossing are popular because in the fierce competition in the market, products must attract customers' attention through labels. This development trend also greatly increases the quality requirements, so ITW years ago It began to establish and continue to expand the prepress section. Now that standard products are decreasing and special promotional labels are increasing, the demand for printing plates has soared in the past few years. The external plate-making scheme cannot be close to the customer's requirements and needs to change this situation. Today's prepress business has become a separate service project provided by the company to its customers, because the reduction in volume has caused a relatively higher proportion of prepress costs.

Digital process

Seven years ago, only a few Apple computers had been developed into the prepress business. Since 1997, in addition to negative film exposure and proofing, the company has retracted the entire prepress process from data processing until plate exposure. At this stage, ITW's pre-press can gradually process the data according to the characteristics of the flexographic printing - including trapping and even drying.

Since the output film costs hundreds of thousands of euros per year, ITW initiated a market research program aimed at introducing digital direct imaging. For the evaluation, the manufacturer of the flexible CTP system was invited to participate in the test. The system supplier is required to make a flexo version based on a predetermined value while proofing. According to the print test results, only two manufacturers were selected. Among them, the key to Esko-Graphics' successful bid is to be able to provide CDI systems and complete solutions including workflow systems.

The Esko-Graphics CDI system can perform exposure imaging on flexible plates up to 1067mm x 1524mm. The system uses Power-Beam optical imaging lenses with an output capability of 4m2 per hour and a resolution of 1800-2800 dpi. In order to obtain the best circular dot, ITW used a 2540 dpi exposure, and used 54 lines per inch for all shrink labels and elastic labels with large area images.

Reduce setup time

ITW identified the advantages of sleeve technology at the investment decision stage and decided to purchase it. Plates produced directly on the sleeve will achieve higher quality; in addition, the printing machine's adjustment time can be reduced by half. The sleeve system of the CDI system includes a solution that is adjusted according to the workflow of the sleeve, such as a sleeve loading and unloading device, so that the exposure length is expanded to 1610 mm; the focus range adjusted according to the workflow of the sleeve and the corresponding GRAPHOLAS software. The sleeve technology used by ITW combined with the CDI system is more economical than the seamless sleeve imaging.

In addition to the CDI system, ITW also installed the Esko-Graphics workflow. There are a total of 3 Pack-Edge packages used to make labels. Their functions include trapping, vectorization, and decontamination.

With the Color-Tone software to modify the image, ITW uses a color selection package to handle colors that exceed the CMYK color space. Digital Continuous Exposure uses PLATO software tools. The tool passes the finished layout to FLEX-RIP, generates LEN exposure data from FLEX-RIP, and then transfers it to the CDI system.

Sleeve plate

The digital plate is cut to the correct size before exposure, and the plate is then accurately mounted on the sleeve at the imposition station. The sleeve is then mounted on the CDI system using a special handling device for exposure. ITW used this method to make 96 sleeve plates every day, and then used a crane to send the imaged sleeve plates to the fully automated FLEX-LIGHT-60-ASL processor. The processor can expose, rinse, dry, and process 11 sleeve versions at the same time without any manual intervention.

summary

ITW's focus: Flexo printing products: Flexible labels and shrink labels Sales: $9.3 billion in 2003 Machines and equipment: 3 satellite flexographic printing presses, 4-color to 10-color prepress: Flexographic digital imaging workflow :Esko-Graphics
Website:
Platemaking Equipment: CDI System (Cyrel Digital Imager)
Exposure size: 1067mm×1524mm
Production capacity: 4m2/h
Resolution: 1800～2800dpi
Special equipment: Sleeve handling device selection: Exposure length can be extended to 1600mm
Workflow: Pack-Edge/Data Editing and Correction, Color-Tone/Flexographic Printing Image Processing, FLEX-RIP Technology for Proofing and Plate Data Output

In summary, direct imaging brings abrupt changes to flexographic printing quality. Using a sleeve plate can produce 1% small dots on a flexographic plate. But improving the quality of light is not enough, and every investment in ITW must be reflected in improving productivity. In addition, the universal digital workflow improves the reliability of production, which is extremely important because zero-stock production does not allow errors. For ITW, conversion from analog platemaking to digital platemaking is worthwhile in many ways. ITW has determined the direction for optimizing production for the next step: seamless sleeve imaging.

Reprinted from: Printing Technology