Keeping Your Aniloxes Healthy

When an anilox is not running the proper volume, the first idea is to “tone the ink” by adding base. There has always been the challenge of matching the hand proofer in the ink room to the anilox in press.

Typically, the ink specialist will mix the ink stronger in the ink room so that when it goes to press he has a good chance of adding only extender and not base to the mixture to get it right. This procedure is fairly common in flexography, but in an age where uptime is everything, this procedure is old school and unacceptable.