Colordyne Technologies and Styers Equipment Company recently teamed up to retrofit a 25-year-old inline flexo press with a new state-of-the-art digital print engine for Denver, CO-based Action Label Company.

The reason for the retrofit conversion was to perform short run work more quickly and efficiently, says Andy Espinoza, vice president of Action Label.

“We do a lot of short runs, but this existing flexo press didn’t hold register to do four-color process that well,” Espinoza says of the Allied inline press he’s owned since 1990. “So when this opportunity came up to help us do our short runs, and it required no plates, we jumped at the chance to turn our outdated flexo press into a profitable and flexible, short run, four-color process digital printing workhorse.”

Espinoza quickly moved to update his old press with a Colordyne 3600 Series Retrofit digital label and tag printing platform, which provides a combination of high print quality, fast job production and low equipment cost.

The advantage of the 3600 Series Retrofit for label converters like Action Label, which also caters to distributors and other label companies, is that it allows them to add full-color digital inkjet printing to its existing flexographic press – an ideal solution for profitable short run work. That’s because with the 3600 Series Retrofit, label converters avoid setup expenses, reduce waste, and are now able to offer their customers the flexibility and turnaround times they have come to expect from a digital system.

Espinoza says what made the Colordyne Retrofit an attractive option was the cost-savings associated with eliminating the need to buy print cylinders and plates, along with a significant reduction in set-up waste and production time – a costly process that was required for each short run on his existing press.

Espinoza worked with Justin Styers of Overland Park, KS-based Styers Equipment Company to integrate the retrofit and obtain the Colordyne digital print engine. Styers says companies like Action Label are perfect candidates for retrofit upgrades as it gives them another way to service their customers by performing more profitable short run work.

“Digital is just the way the market is going,” Styers says. “As conversion programs like the Colordyne 3600 Series Retrofit continue to get faster with higher resolution in a smaller footprint, you can already see that the label converter industry is leaning that way.

“Of course you will see a flexographic press in ten years. But the traditional crossover between digital and flexo, in regards to run length, will grow concurrently with the industry’s adoption of digital print. Our installations are producing jobs in the time it took them to set up their flexo presses. There’s a big change going on in this industry – and it’s digital,” says Styers.

peed and high resolution are two strong characteristics of the 3600 Series Retrofit. With print speeds of up to 275 feet per minute (84 m/min) at a resolution of 1600 x 1375, the 3600 Series Retrofit platform creates a powerful productivity tool suitable for use in a variety of business environments. Label converters can use the 3600 Series Retrofit to profitably augment and grow current CMYK plus spot color printing activities on short to medium runs.