Has your company invested in digital press technology? Are you running the latest flexo press? Have you considered 7-color process printing – or are already using it? Do you care about wasting time, material, or energy? If you answer YES to any of these, then read on, this article is for you. 

Why would you spend millions of pounds on the latest equipment, the best factories and the best people – then struggle with simpler questions, on every job…What anilox will I use for this color? How do I make my flexo label look like my digital label?

For many printers, it’s still about protecting margin, reducing waste and operating efficiently in an environment of short runs, high volumes and compressed lead times. It’s a matter of flexibility, and this makes 2023 an ideal opportunity for printers to focus on reducing downtime and disruption, which have become all-too-common issues.

At Pulse, we seek to make the label printing process slick and smooth every time, but that’s not always simple. Print jobs, becoming ever more complex, require multiple spot colors or half-tones requiring numerous anilox changes.

The challenge of changeovers
In changing aniloxes, there are multiple steps in the process that for many printers, actually aren’t necessary. Each additional processing step brings the potential for errors, waste and costs and in a demanding print market, Fixed Anilox Printing, which we proudly champion at Pulse, stands out as the obvious solution to reducing this complexity in the print process.

We often talk about the importance of consistency, efficiency, quality and cost control in printing, but this can be a tough balancing act for printers to achieve. Particularly as color precision can be complex and label designs are becoming more elaborate and detailed. This routinely involves multiple anilox, of different volumes, to complete the job. 

Of course, control patches can be valuable for ensuring the right anilox is selected every time but doing this can be a time and money sink, adding unnecessary delays too. While using multiple anilox to achieve the quality of print required is still the most common approach, it’s far from the most efficient. 

By contrast, the potential of Fixed Anilox Printing becomes ever clearer. Printers can save time otherwise spent selecting the right roll and the associated press downtime, as well as remove variability from the printing process, minimising the risk of mistakes or variability occurring.

Aniloxes can be complex and setting the right conditions for print success has a number of variables in place, but thankfully, today’s technology means that a Fixed Anilox Printing system is viable and can unlock efficiencies and closed loop color management for everyone.

Exploring the Fixed Anilox Printing system
Pioneered by our team at Pulse Roll Label Products, the Fixed Anilox Printing system offers a level of control and consistency never seen before in the narrow web and label industries. Printers looking to drive efficiency in their operations and remove process roadblocks will uncover a myriad of advantages. 

We are all looking to quality and efficiency as a core driver of business strategy, and the ability to cut out variability in anilox selection is huge. In one fell swoop, printers can reduce downtime, minimise mistakes, and deliver service that stands out in today’s increasingly crowded landscape. It’s achieving more with less, which is a huge theme for the market in 2023.

Printers can stabilize UV flexo label printing by using just one anilox volume to produce any imaginable spot color, made simple with the unique formulation of Pulse Roll Label Products’ PureTone range of high-strength single-pigment inks. 

While many inks on the market are not strong or balanced enough to produce all colors using just one anilox, the chemistry behind PureTone marks it out as exceptional in the field. The inks are a real game-changer for printers, requiring a lower coating weight and offering low migration performance. In turn, this leads to faster printing and fewer print imperfections.

It’s never been easier to access “right first-time” printing; PureTone remains consistent, run to run. Plus, with vibrancy so important to achieving the ‘wow’ factor for customers in label printing, PureTone can deliver a Delta E of less than 2 with ease.

PureTone also facilitates increased flexibility, enabling the print of half and full tones using just one plate. When used alongside the bespoke mixing database, which gives you all the information you need to match colours instantly, this unlocks remarkable efficiency boosts. With a fixed anilox set installed, rollers do not need changing between jobs, helping ensure maximum volume, speed, and machine uptime.

Interestingly, Fixed Anilox Printing can also be a more sustainable choice by reducing ink consumption, which of course, brings cost benefits too. As well as not needing to run test prints to match the correct color, the high strength of PureTone inks means less ink is needed to achieve the bold, vibrant colours currently in demand. With a Fixed Anilox Printing system in place, it is possible to reduce ink consumption by an enormous 30%, meaning less money is spent on raw materials, and improved overall job margins.

The label market has shown impressive resilience recently compared with some other sectors but taking advantage of every opportunity to drive operational efficiency can help label printers to prosper. With increased demand for tight lead times and more short-run work, Fixed Anilox Printing could be the key to finding new efficiencies and making businesses agile enough to keep up with evolving trends.

Another benefit of Fixed Anilox Printing is its ability to address of one of the biggest hurdles for today’s printers and converters – digital to flexo press transitions. This challenge can be made a problem of the past; PureTone’s unique high-strength formulation means that, when used alongside calibration software, making the jump to flexo printing is easy. This is because PureTone provides exemplary run-to-run consistency and repeatability across different print methods, making it simpler to scale jobs.

So, could Fixed Anilox Printing be the next evolution of your print business? The process is simple and has already proven successful for several leading label printers. Our technical team supports our customers to switch to a fixed system, and in many cases, this is achieved in less than a week. We also use our extensive experience to recommend specific anilox to make the system best fit your needs.

At its core, Fixed Anilox Printing is a very simple process – it’s about eliminating manual steps in the process and having the right tools in place. Done right, this system helps standardise production, maximise capacity, and save time and money, while reducing the effort to efficiently manage your flexo operations.

One anilox, one set of inks, and one next-generation mixing database. That’s all you need to take your label business into the future!