FFEI has announced that its Graphium hybrid digital inkjet label press now benefits from a host of new features that increase productivity and the number of finished label jobs that can be produced in a shift.

According to the company, Graphium Label Production Workflow is designed specifically for the conversion of labels in a digital, flexo and hybrid environment. As a fully automated pre-press system, minimal manual intervention is required to transform digital files into finished fit-for-purpose labels. In doing so, it ensures converting production waste and pre-press production touch points are kept to a minimum, while at the same time improving accuracy and repeatability.

Graphium Workflow enables a single job to be split across multiple output devices with tight centralized color management and touch free automation. It allows color using ISO standards to be implemented across flexo and digital. With Graphium, the largest coverage areas can be printed on a flexo spot plate. This creates a balance between setup cost, which is lower than pure flexo and running cost that is lower than both pure flexo and pure digital for medium run jobs.

“We developed Graphium Label Production Workflow to address a vital but as yet unmet need to efficiently manage label production,” says Andy Cook, FFEI’s managing director. “Our customers helped us define workflow tools that can dramatically increase the benefits of a hybrid system and take productivity way beyond anything available today. The result is that Graphium Workflow provides pre-press operators with an intuitive, end-to-end means to digitally control the setup of files in the most cost efficient manner – regardless of whether that is just simply inkjet or inkjet, flexo and finishing.”

Graphium Workflow’s multichannel processing also enables spot colors, text, graphics and barcodes to be processed efficiently using optimized settings. It can process images and graphics to ISO standards, create spot colors utilizing the full Graphium gamut, achieve Grade-A barcodes on almost any device and optimize small font reproduction with almost no manual intervention.
In addition, new print engine software boosts print speeds, which means Graphium can now print premium quality, 5 colour labels at over 45m/min. The introduction of a new camera for auto registration will also boost productivity, by reducing the time needed to check and correct registration for different medias. By doing so, the new auto registration system will reduce substrate waste.

Operators will also have the ability to set the Graphium press into a “cold standby” mode. The new mode allows a quick machine start up time and also reduces power consumption and ink waste.