Digital Imaging3rd Annual Plate/Platemaking/

Sleeve Selection Guide

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Laser-Engraved Sleeves

Calendar Technology

SID & Polymeric Films

TECHNOLOGIES & TECHNIQUES

New World of In-the-RoundLaser-Engraved Sleeves Offer Quality Control Advantages

By Nathan Smith, with Gary Moravcik, Edward Stolzman and Adam Smrdel

Just as explorers came to North America hundreds of years ago and discovered a new continent, unparal-leled advances in digital engraving and elastomer

sleeve-making have arrived in the New World. With these advances, a case for a 100 percent in-the-round

(ITR) elastomer workflow can now be made. Driven by unprec-edented efficiency, consistency, quality, and speed, identified and acted upon years earlier in Europe; a new age of expan-sion and innovation in the world of flexography has begun.

EFFICIENCY DRIVES DEMANDFlat plates have traditionally dominated the North Ameri-

can flexography market. Even in the last several years, the limited amount of cantilevered presses, the long lead time for sleeves, and the perceived high cost have limited adoption. But printers are now demanding ITR technology for several reasons. The most immediateefficiency.

ITR sleeves require no plate mounting stations, mounting material or labor. This allows for quicker makeready. When

WHY ROUND VS. FLAT: PRESSROOM PRODUCTIVITY

WHY ELASTOMER VS. POLYMER

The actual elastomer sleeve used in production of Carey Colors print promo sheet.

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3rd Annual Plate/Platemaking/Sleeve

Selection Guide

mounted, digitally engraved sleeves are aligned to each other during engraving (using notches) for perfect registration. This leads to considerable savings on labor, substrates, and ink when getting up to color.

With fewer variables and a more uniform printing surface, press speeds can be increased beyond what is capable with flat plates. Short run and repeat jobs can be changed out quickly, and the increased durability of elastomer sleeves allow for longer printruns. Since there are fewer things that can go wrong with sleeves during the printing process, like undetected flat plate mounting issues, plate lift, cylinder bounce, lack of uniformity, etc.; ITR can help eliminate variables that lead to problems during printruns that cause press down time.

While individual elastomer sleeves may be more expensive than plates, because of their increased productivity, combined with the elimination of redundant plates, elastomer sleeves will actually lead to an overall cost savings over flat plates.

Quality improvements with sleeves over plates are the second reason that printers are switching to ITR. Digitally engraved elastomer sleeves have unparalleled registration. Because registration and uniformity problems with flat plates are amplified across the web, there has often been a signifi-cant amount of waste associated with flat plates.

For instance, a printer worked with eight lanes of fine detail graphics printing on a 66-in. web, and was consistently forced to throw away 33 percent of the printed material because of registration issues. Switching the plant to elastomer engraved

PROMOTIONAL PRESS SHEET

Produced on Kodak Flexcel Direct SystemPrepress and Laser Engraving by Carey ColorElastomer seamless sleevesProcess CMYK solvent inksPress: Windmoeller & Hoelscher

Reverse print on clear poly laminated to white PETPrint Speed: 1600 fpmAnilox: C1000, M1000, Y1000, K1000120,133,150,175 line screen, 2400 dpi

Below surface engraved sleeve side view.

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* Elastomer Sleeves last 2-4 times longer than Polymer Plates or Sleeves * True laser ablated sleeves utilize below surface engraving technology, thus controlling press gain.* Reduce traps to .003 consistently* Faster registration* Short set up time* Faster press speeds (2000 fpm+)* No more plate mounting, plate lift, press bounce or plate swelling* Reach color density faster with improved print contrast* Dramatically reduce non-revenue downtime on change overs* Hold perfect registration across the entire width of the sheet* Substrate savings and press optimization reached!

It was a small group of innovative thinkers thatproved the Earth wasnt flat either...

ROUND Elastomer Sleeves can be your future!

www.careyweb.com

sleeves allowed the production team to consistently hold a .003 trap across the entire sheet, reducing waste to zero. Pho-topolymer flat plates have a traditional tolerance of +/- .015 tolerance across a 66-in. web.

The tolerance spec of elastomer sleeves is +/-.001, boasts Carey CEO Gary Moravcik. Printers are also able to combine sleeves with flat plates to gain some of the advantages of the sleeve without having to eliminate flat plates altogether.

One of the reasons for the slow adoption of ITR in North America, as compared to Europe, has been the fewer cantile-vered presses in existence here. The last few years have seen a marked increase in the installation of cantilevered presses, but many printers have struggled to realize immediate returns on their investment.

Print speed increases are easier to attain when using a 100 percent sleeve based workflow. Sleeves allow faster printruns and allow more printruns on multi-million dollar flagship press-es like W&H, PCMC, and F&K. One print salesman recently remarked, Running a brand new press with flat plates is like buying a Ferrari and driving it only through school zones.

Sleeves also embrace new technologies like extended gam-ut and Opaltone. The uniformity, consistency, and registration of sleeves combined with the ink transference, density, and resolution of digitally engraved elastomers allow faster printing speeds with superior quality. This allows printers to leverage new technologies to achieve ROI now, instead of later.

ELASTOMERS INHERENT ADVANTAGECost, perceived supply chain problems, and limited

inventories have held back the use of elastomer sleeves in America, but new advances in imaging and manufacturing

Below surface engraving reduces the risks of printing shoulders and inconsistent dot gains. Control of the shoulders allows for razor sharp text even at 1 and 2 point and the ability to print smaller reverse text without filling in. Imaging with a direct laser can create stronger dots than that of the Laser Ablated Mask system used in polymer plates and sleeves.

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For more information about:Kodak Flexcel Direct Laser Engraved Sleeves

Call Carey Color Inc. at 800-555-3142.Or visit us at www.careyweb.com

Left to right: Dr. Douglas J. Edwards,president, digital packaging & functionalprinting, Kodak; and Gary Moravcik, presidentand CEO, Carey Color Incorporated.

are bringing the inherent advantages of elastomers to the attention of printers.

Elastomer sleeves are thicker and more durable and can print two-to-four times longer than polymer sleeves. This eliminates the need to buy multiple plates or polymer sleeves for long runs and repeated abusive short runs that require many cleanings and press cylin-der mountings. This leads to cost saving in the long run, and cost predictability.

A typical comment from printers who have switched from polymer to elasto-mer sleeves is, Elastomer usually costs less than polymer, and were only buy-ing one set instead of two. So, the sav-ings are great, and our print results are more consistent. Further cost savings are realized because elastomer sleeves eliminate the need to purchase expen-sive cushion adaptors and replace them in the future.

Sleeve durability does not just come from elastomers increased ability to stand up to press pressures, corrosive inks and cleaning solutions, but also from the way they are imaged. Digital control of the halftone shoulders contrib-utes to dot stability and reduces break-off, which adds durability and consis-tency. Below surface engraving also produces a more consistent product by reducing highlight press gain, even if a job is slightly over squeezed from press-to-press and operator-to-operator.

Weve been told by many print cus-tomers, Our pressmen love sleeves. They love elastomer sleeves even more because below surface engraving reduces the risk of printing shoulders and the risk of inconsistent dot gains. Control of the shoulders allows for razor sharp text, even at one and two point and the ability to print smaller reverse text without filling in.

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Elastomer customization is possible through the chemi-cal and physical processes of sleeve manufacturing itself. It is now possible to create a special elastomer compound specifically for your press to get the absolute best from your fingerprint, says Moravcik. Because elastomers have no photographic layer, which is the time consuming part of new polymer development, customized materials for your specific needs can be developed in weeks and not years. He contin-ues, Slight changes in elastomeric compounds can increase ink transfer for specific inks and substrates where polymers have hit a dead end.

A wide variety of elastomer materials with different durom-eters and ink lay down characteristics are now available.

Higher ink densities allow printers to achieve higher press speeds and maintain print contrast. At a test run with a set of custom laser-engraved elastomer sleeves, a customer was amazed at an unprecedented printing event, The density was so high we had to cut it Thats a good thing!

Quality control is another area where elastomer sleeve manufacturing and imaging have grown leaps and bounds. Kodak has developed a system (Flexcel Direct) whereby all sleeves are quickly pre-scanned on the engraver to check for a flawless surface and rejected before imaging if any imper-fections are detected.

Laser-engraved sleeves also have an inherent quality con-trol advantage over photopolymer. Laser-engraved sleeves have three steps to imaging: file prep, engraving, and rins-ing. This means that the sleeve only has to be mounted one time, engraved, rinsed, and shipped. Photopolymer sleeves have many more steps: file prep, mask ablation, exposure, development, wash-out, and several options for drying, post exposure, etc., and then shipment. This adds several more variables to the imaging process, each of which adds more analog steps and points of failure in the imaging process.

By increasing the market volume and bringing in multiple suppliers from around the world, we have created a competi-tive atmosphere in the USA manufacturing infrastructure: increasing the quality, reducing the supply time, and reducing the raw material unit cost of elastomer sleeves, says Moravcik.

Left to right: Dr. Douglas J. Edwards, president, digital packaging & functional printing, Kodak; Gary Moravcik, president and CEO, Carey Color Inc.

Variable sleeve wall thicknesses of elastomer sleeves.

Left to right: Dr. Douglas J. Edwards president digital packaging & functional printing Kodak; Gary Moravcik president and CEO

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Variable sleeve wall thicknesses of elastomer sleeves

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New covering methods which allow even higher quality sleeves, with no joins and no overlapping are in development.

Another supply chain innovation has led directly to cost savings with elastomers: the ability to regrind and reimage sleeves. Elastomer sleeves can be produced with wall thick-nesses from .125-in. to .500-in. with phenomenal print results on all, claims Carey salesman and flexo technology expert, Ed Stolzman. Elastomer sleeves can be kiss ground to the next lower repeat and re-imaged once the sleeve is done be-ing used, creating as many as three-to-four uses of the same sleeve. When considering overall ROI, this will drastically reduce costs.

BELOW SURFACE IMAGINGBecause of their increased ink transfer and contrast

capabilities, the fastest running, highest ink density materials for press speeds of 1500 to 3000 fpm are direct engraved elas-tomer sleeves. To best leverage elastomer ITR technologies, Carey Color was chosen to partner with Kodak to be the first North American install for the Flexcel Direct System.

Flexcels TIFF Front End takes below surface engraving to unprecedented levels. Shoulder angles, undercuts, variable relief depths, and other below surface imaging can all be controlled through the conversion of a traditional 2-D 1-bit

Sarah Moravcik of Carey Color demonstrates loading of the elastomer sleeve on the Flexcel Direct System.

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ENCODED ELASTOMER SLEEVES

Flat plates cant talk, but elastomer sleeves can! Carey Color is spearheading a revolutionary innovation for sleeve manufacturers, which allows them to uniquely encode each sleeve and track that sleeve throughout its lifetiime. Careys encoded elastomer sleeves can tell you where theyve been and what theyve done from manu-facture to regrind, to the last impression.

Senior Developer Chad Gray remarks, Print manag-ers can scan a sleeve in their warehouse with a mobile device and determine its size, when it was made, elas-tomer composition, how many times its been on press, etc. Its now possible to track the entire lifecycle of an elastomer sleeve!

By linking this information to our secure, yet globally accessible customer database, production managers can get a new job from sales, and instantly be able to see how many sleeves are in the pipeline that will fit that job or what could be reground for that job. Gray says proudly, This idea was conceived and developed at Carey Color as a direct response to our customers needs. Printers need a way to manage their inventory and know where and what every sleeve in their enter-prise is at a moments notice. We are giving them that.

Sarah Moravcik of Carey Color demonstrates loading of the elastomer sleeve on the Flexcel Direct System

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TIFF to a 3D TIFF. The 3D system has been combined with the extremely precise laser diode array imager that is faster and more powerful than any of the high resolution modulated C02 or fiber lasers on the market. This gives the quality advan-tages of engraving digitally while approaching the speed of the LAMS process.

It also features redundant diodes, autofocus optics, and cantilevered sleeve loading. This all leads to faster prep, imaging, and handling times and has afforded dramatic re-ductions in actual engraving time, thus dramatically reducing overall costs of imaged sleeves to customers.

Whats the most exciting part of all of this? asks Moravcik with a smile, Even though it blows the doors off everything out there, this architecture is still in its infancy stage, with nowhere to go but even faster, with even better quality.

Welcome to the new world!

Nathan Smith is the senior network/systems analyst for Carey Color Inc., a full service digital imaging company headquartered in Sharon Center, OH, with locations in Illinois, Wisconsin, and the U.K. The firm employs more than 100 experienced prepress craftsmen. Due to their expertise, Carey Color was chosen in 2011 to partner with Kodak to be the North American alpha site for the Flexcel Direct Digital Engraving system. Carey also operates four additional laser engravers at multiple sites in the U.S., and in the U.K., manufacturing laser engraved plates and sleeves for dry offset, flexo, emboss, and Intaglio printing.

This article was compiled with significant technical guid-ance provided by Gary Moravcik, president/CEO of Carey Color Inc., and Edward Stolzman and Adam Smrdel, flexog-raphy division sales representatives. For more information regarding elastomer sleeves; please contact Carey Color Inc. at 800-555-3142 or visit www.careyweb.com.Carey Color Inc., Sharon Center, OH.

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