A complete flexographic printing process was presented to participants at Bobst's in-house exhibition at the new Flexo Center of Excellence at Bobst Bielefeld on 13 February 2020.
Bobst Bielefeld has expanded its Competence Centre to include a prepress department, making it a fully equipped centre of excellence for the flexographic printing process especially for printing with a fixed colour set and with wide-web central cylinder flexo presses.
In its centre, Bobst works together with important industry partners who took part in the event and thus provided a Seamless integration of all components that result in a continuous production process.
"Bobst Bielefeld's new Centre of Excellence offers a unique opportunity to test and continuously develop the process of printing with a fixed ink set under one roof. Bobst involves industry partners in open partnerships," says Bobst Bielefeld's Managing Director Mark McInulty. "The centre's task is to support our customers in maximising the benefits of printing with a fixed ink set using central cylinder flexo presses."
Printing with a fixed colour set is growing steadily. In addition to the conventional colours cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK), the process works with the three additional printing colours orange, green and violet (OGV), covering more than 90 % of the Pantone colour palette, compared to around 60% previously.
Packaging manufacturers who implement it achieve the following for several reasons Significant time and cost savingsYou don't have to change inks and therefore wash printing units, you don't need large stocks of spot colours, you don't waste time mixing inks and you achieve guaranteed colour consistency even if you reprint jobs after a long time or produce them in different parts of the world.
Bobst exhibited the following technology during the in-house exhibition:
- VISION CI: Launched in October 2019, the central cylinder flexo printing press offers the best price-performance ratio in its class. It can be set up quickly and easily and allows fast job changes. It boasts technical innovations, a high degree of automation and exclusive intelligent technologies that guarantee repeatable process stability and high consistency when printing with water- or solvent-based inks. And all this with minimal waste and easy production of jobs of all run sizes using a wide range of different substrates.
- EXPERT CI: A centre-cylinder flexo press with innovative features that help customers achieve maximum consistency in centre-cylinder flexo printing. This makes it perfectly suited to the requirements of fixed colour set printing with seven printing colours. The press delivers stable, controlled print results and offers exceptionally high productivity with both water-based and solvent-based inks. Attendees at the in-house exhibition watched as the EXPERT CI produced sustainable pouches live from new flexible mono-material composites with a high barrier effect, which were shown for the first time at K 2019.
- Digital test bench: This new quality control technology combines digital projections for proofing purposes with real-time visualisations for matching printed products with digital proofs.
- Connected services: First-class machines need first-class services. Attendees saw some of the solutions from the BOBST Services team that help print service providers optimise their productivity and quality, while reducing machine downtime and increasing production sustainability.
Partnerships for a perfect process
Visitors to the in-house exhibition followed a complete flexographic printing process from the generation of the print data to the printed rolls. Starting with the pre-press department, which is equipped with the latest technology presented live during the event, they discussed various topics with Bobst's industrial partners in the individual process areas.
Other partners demonstrated their techniques and expertise in coordinating all the components involved in printing with a fixed colour set, which enables the best and most efficient results in this printing process.
The presentations were followed by a demonstration of printing with the VISION CI and EXPERT CI flexo presses. live equipped with the latest technology from the industry partners involved in the fixed colour set printing project. Bobst's digital test table was used for quality control, while the advantages and possibilities of e-services were demonstrated live at the Bobst Bielefeld training centre.
"Every single industrial partner who works with us here makes a decisive contribution to optimising the flexo process with their innovations," says Mark McInulty. "This in-house exhibition is a prime example of close collaboration - many companies have come together and contributed their experience and capabilities to create a valuable event for our mutual customers. We are delighted to be working with our partners and have welcomed them to our Centre of Excellence."
Source: Bobst Bielefeld GmbH
