Flexo Print Label Printing
1. What is it?
- Often called Flexo print and similar to Letterpress, Flexography uses a rotary relief printing plate, which carries the image or text
- The plate is mounted onto a cylinder or sleeve to be used for printing
- Has been developed over recent years to become one of the best conventional label printing methods, especially for price and speed.
2. How is the ink applied?
- Each colour of water-based ink or UV ink to be printed will have its own plate and ink unit
- The ink is in liquid form and is transferred to the plate via the Anilox rollers
- The Anilox rollers have thousands of tiny cells across their surface, which hold the ink whilst transferring it from the ink duct to the printing plate. The size of these cells dictates the volume of ink transferred.
3. Which kinds of labels are best suited to this method?
- Medium to long runs
- All applications
- Added value products through to high volume commodity
- UV flexo suitable for synthetic labels
4. What are the advantages and disadvantages?
Advantages
- Quick set up
- Fast changes between variants
- High quality image printing
- Vibrant colours through UV process
Disadvantages
- Can have low opacity on spot colours
- Very fine detail can be lost without expert artwork techniques
- Flexo plates can be time consuming to make