North American Graphics Adds to Digital Platemaking Capabilities
ROCHESTER, N.Y.—North American Graphics (NAG) in Warren, Mich., added a KODAK FLEXCEL NX Wide System to its arsenal for digital platemaking.
“North American Graphics is a digital prepress and platemaking specialist, and became the first trade house in the United States to install Kodak’s FLEXCEL NX Wide System, serving clients throughout the U.S. and Canada,” said Art Thompson, NAG vice president and general manager. “Our decision to go with the FLEXCEL NX System was due to the capabilities of the plate system. Some of our customers had tested KODAK plates on some jobs that we had done using our former supplier’s plates. Quite frankly, the KODAK plate was head and shoulders above in quality, color gamut capabilities, consistency, and repeatability. There was just so much pop.”
The FLEXCEL NX System is a digital platemaking system that uses a combination of state-of-the-art imaging technology and materials science to produce plates that deliver outstanding on-press performance. The FLEXCEL NX Wide System provides all the features and benefits of the current FLEXCEL NX System in a larger format, supporting plates up to 42 by 60 inches. This allows printers and trade houses to produce a wider range of package sizes or increase efficiency through the ability to optimize job layout on one plate.
“We already had existing clients who needed wider plates than we could provide, so we’d go out of house for it,” said Thompson. “Now we’ve brought all that work into our facility. We were up and running with the FLEXCEL NX Wide System within the first week.”
KODAK plates and the new FLEXCEL NX System give NAG the capability to solve imaging issues for its customers, Thompson said. “I had a printer that fought whenever he had a four-color job,” he explained. “We did a characterization on his press, and his customer loved it, and he got four more jobs right after it. He’s got a lot more confidence in what he can do, and he knows we’re going to be consistent.”
