It’s a Brave New World

“All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas/Layin’ in the sun,/Talkin’ ‘bout the things/They woulda coulda shoulda done….” The beloved Shel Silverstein poem is a cautionary tale for flexographic trade shops still on the fence about implementing a digital plate workflow. Said to eliminate many of the variables associated with its analog counterpart, digital flexographic platemaking has matured, and a growing number of trade shops and their customers are wondering why it took them so long to “come around.”

NPP Packaging Graphics Specialists is one such company. Although the $7 million, Indianapolis-based prepress house serving the corrugated, wide and narrow web, and tag and label markets has had digital proofing and digital front-end capability for a long time, it delayed bringing digital platemaking in house in favor of outsourcing to another firm. Recently, however, the company installed a Cyrel Digital Imager (CDI) Advance flexo platesetter, and the chickens, as they say, have come home to roost.

A flat forehead moment

“We wonder why we didn’t do it two or three years ago,” says Dave Norton, vice president. “We had been considering it for a period of time but, frankly, didn’t see the advantages that are apparent now that we have it in house.” The installation of the CDI imager brought some predictable efficiencies to NPP’s operation: leveraging technology to do more work with fewer people, and being able to meet customer demand for more accurate, high-quality work produced faster and less expensively.

However, “I’d say that the number one driver for us was competition,” Norton adds. “We had competitors that were offering digital solutions, and in order to hold our position with our customers, we needed to put it in. We just needed to be pushed over that edge.”

Now that its transition to a complete digital workflow system is underway, NPP reports that about 50 percent of its customers have jumped the analog ship and come on board. “The most difficult part of the transition is dealing with the existing film,” Norton says. “Some of that will stay—we have customers that supply us with films from which we manufacture the printing plates—but I’d say that within the next six months we’d be at 75 percent.”

Given its high-quality orientation, the tag and label segment is a natural for transition from analog to digital plate production, based on the advantages of digital productivity and consistency, Norton says. He adds that as the size and price of equipment have come down over the past 10 years, a lot of label printers have installed platemakers of their own, changing the competitive landscape for trade shops like NPP, which goes head-to-head with offset printers in that market.

Preaching to the converted

What NPP did not anticipate was being able to transition as many of its corrugated and line-art customers as quickly as it has. “We expected that customers doing high-end, four-color and modified process printing would embrace digital plates because of the high-quality, fast turnaround demand in those markets,” Norton says. “But what we’ve discovered through some of the testing we’ve done is that a number of printers working with fine line graphics were also enthusiastic about switching. That was a surprise.”

The company recently converted a pair of unlikely customers from analog to digital plates. “One of them prints bandaid wrappers, another prints microwave popcorn bags,” Norton says. In both cases, “One set of test plates was all it took for them to decide that’s where they wanted to go.” While he acknowledges that there is a degree of “force-feeding” new technology to some customers, “Once you’re able to demonstrate that the product is better and more saleable, the case is made. In the end it’s a ‘show-me’ thing. We’ll work with them on the first set of plates. If they don’t like it they don’t pay.”

A larger role for CTP flexo

While NPP still produces analog plates, Norton admits that conventional platemaking is fading away, even as a dwindling number of customers continues to specify film for sentimental or other reasons. That said, converting film to digital “isn’t all that difficult for us,” he says. “We already have an electronic file because we image our films digitally. So it’s already there. The issue is just the expense they would have to pay if we had already made that job on film and wanted to transition that job to a digital plate. That digital plate will cost more than the plate made from the film.” At that point, Norton says, “It becomes an expense-driven issue. If customers were satisfied with the printing from a film plate, why pay the extra money for digital?” At NPP, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other: “The way we structure our pricing, a digital plate will cost what the film and plate cost together.”

The fact that computer-to-plate (CTP) has been slow to take hold in the flexo market has to do with the way ink gets transferred to the flexographic printing plate, Norton believes. “The evolution of CTP for flexo has had to wait for the development of finer anilox rolls that permit the plate to hold a smaller dot.” Now that this and other technological challenges have been met, CTP for flexo is the technology responsible for the production of an increasing number of plates in the narrow-web tag and label markets, as well as the wide-web flexible packaging, folding carton, and corrugated market segments.

Lingering resistance based on the cost of equipment might be an obstacle for smaller trade shops that lack the capital to make the transition, Norton says; however, the larger issue is volume. “If you don’t have the volume, it doesn’t make sense.”

Between a rock and a hard place

Both flexographers and trade shops justify the investment in digital platemaking because the competition is investing in it or because their customers are demanding the improved quality print results made possible by digital flexo technology. Trade shops benefit from CTP because it eliminates film and all associated chemistry. Printers benefit in terms of improved reproduction quality, consistency, and repeatability, in addition to the ability to produce fine vignettes because color loss and makeready are “built into” the way the digital plate is made. Consumer product companies increasingly specify CTP to resolve legitimate production issues or to avail themselves of the newest technology in the belief that newer = better.

“We think the handwriting is on the wall,” says Norton. “These are moves you have to make if you want to have an opportunity to grow and be viable five to 10 years from now.”

“All the Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas/Layin’ in the sun,/Talkin’ ‘bout the things/They woulda coulda shoulda done.../But those Woulda-Coulda-Shouldas/All ran away and hid/From one little Did. pP

Whither analog platemaking?

According to Bob Kelsall, Technical Manager for RBCOR, L.L.C., a distributor of photopolymer printing plates (Elaslon flexographic, Miraclon letterpress and Rigilon matrix molding) and plate processing equipment, the transition to digital flexo is happening gradually.

Despite the increasing importance of digital flexo applications, there are still too many small trade shops and label printers who can’t make the transition because the barriers to entry are still too high, requiring an investment ranging from $150,000 to $350,000 and more for a digital imager. At the same time, as the analog segment continues to lose volume, the supply of conventional plate material also diminishes, rendering it more expensive for shops that need it.

What can be done to make analog platemaking more competitive? It comes down to the size of the dot, Kelsall explains. Compared with a conventionally imaged flexographic plate, a digitally imaged dot yields a more precise transfer of ink relative to the size of the dot it prints than its conventionally imaged counterpart. Since the dot does not change size, the plate can hold a much smaller dot than a conventional plate, yielding a printed image that is closer to continuous tone quality than is possible with conventional plates. No real changes can make analog platemaking more competitive, Kelsall concludes, because “to achieve what digital does in analog amounts to a restriction of the process” to which the photopolymer plate is exposed.