Maximize Your Anilox Investment

There are a number of things printers can do to optimize the lives of ceramic anilox rolls, according to Mark Hahn, vice president of sales and marketing, AAA Press International, Inc. (www.aaapress.com). These include proper setting of steel doctor blades to shear ink from the face of the roll; use of ink magnets or filters to remove larger metal particles present in some fluorescent and standard ink colors; proper use of ultrasonic anilox cleaning systems; proper use of ultrasonic anilox cleaner (using the 90-10, no more than 5 rule); regularly cleaning the cleaning solution when it dips below the recommended pH; and experimenting with press side cleaning pastes, which remove 95 percent of impacted and dried ink without the use of abrasive cleaning methods.