Stork Prints Celebrates 20 Years of Laser Engraving Technology

There is cause for much celebration at Stork Prints. The company’s direct laser engraving systems have officially reached the 20-year landmark. The very first laser engraving system, an STK LE2000 for screen-cylinder imaging, was installed this month in 1986 at the Lörrach plant of the German-Swiss textile manufacturing concern, KBC.

The technology marked a major technological breakthrough for the pre-production stages, and the rotary screen printing process—it meant an image could be applied to the screen without film, and chemicals, and in a much shorter time. The specification of this system may seem modest compared with the standards of the very latest high-powered laser engraving systems. With a top speed of 600 RPM, a typical screen would be engraved in about one-and-a-half hours, and the frequency was relatively limited compared with today because the whole laser system would switch on and off.

Daniel Schlenker, who was then the laser engraving operator at KBC—and still working with the company—recalls, “The installation of the LE 2000 was a world-wide sensation, and with good reason—it represented one of the most important advances in pre-production. In a short time, the engraver had completely transformed our workflow. It cut screen make-ready time by 50 percent, and allowed raster quality improvements, which in turn enabled us to offer more sophisticated designs to customers.”

The LE 2000 system provided more than 12 years of highly productive screen manufacturing at KBC. It imaged more than 70,000 screens and it is estimated as saving thousands of hours of labor in the process. The engraver is still in operation to this day. KBC transferred it from Germany to their Hungarian subsidiary, Maya Divatkelmenyomo Rt. Fashion Print, in September 1998; it has just been sold to the Kohma Textile in Ivanovo, Russia, where it will be installed at the end of October 2006. To this day, Stork Prints engraving systems and software remain at the heart of pre-production at KBC, which uses the bestLEN and MAX engraving systems for imaging rotary screens.

Over the years, Stork Prints has given its Austrian subsidiary (now known as Stork Prints Austria) the necessary support to develop the technology further - as a result many industries have benefited from the productivity and quality advances that direct laser engraving offers - firstly wallcovering, then graphics-related markets, such as flexo, label and packaging.

The advance of Stork’s direct laser engraving technology has been marked by a number of breakthroughs over the years. The first of these was the arrival of the Image 3000 software package at ITMA, the global textile industry trade fair, in 1992. This was the only effective CAD system which enabled files to be prepared digitally for engraving. Used in tandem with the engraver, this system provided the first fully digital workflow solution. The launch of the Laser Exposer (LEX), in 1995, saw the arrival of a system that offered major quality improvements, combining the fineness seen in conventional exposure with the efficiency of the direct engraving process.

In 1999, the multi-beam laser technology, offering high precision imaging at much faster speed, was developed, in collaboration with the company formerly known as BASF Drucksysteme—now part of the Flint Group, whose new EPDM / rubber sleeve and polymer plate technology could withstand the intensity of engraving. This was the springboard for the arrival of direct engraving systems that would turn the engraving of printing forms for all relief-printing applications—flexo, letterpress and dry-offset—into a fully-integrated, two-step chemical-free process: engrave and rinse. As a result, there are a host of systems suited for many graphics markets, including narrow-web, flexible packaging and wallcovering, and the technology is increasingly accessible to companies with relatively smaller budgets.

Today, Stork has an installed base of more than 300 laser engraving systems world-wide. Dick Joustra, president, Stork Prints Group, comments, “As we reach this milestone we can look back with great pride at the pioneering efforts of the original technical group, then led by Ing. Siegfried Rückl. Now, the direct engraving process has an immense beneficial impact on textile and graphic printing, with even small-medium enterprises being able to take total ownership of the pre-production workflow. And that is a tribute to our Austrian colleagues’ relentless desire to seek solutions that help our customers reduce costs and time to market.”

Currently, Stork Prints seeking ways to further reduce the cost of ownership of direct laser engraving, thanks to developments of fully compatible ancillary products, in association with AKL Flexotechnik. It is seeking to improve the efficiency of the seamless-endless sleeve, and work is continuing to further develop the power of the CO2 laser system, to optimise the performance: quality ratio of the whole process. Furthermore, an entry-level new laser engraving programme, featuring systems that make the process viable for narrow-web printers with relatively small budgets, is being developed.

Joustra adds, “Today, players in these industries face intense global competition, rising costs, eroding margins and shorter production runs—and for this reason, we cannot stand still. We believe the laser engraving process - with the much improved flexibility, performance and quality it offers—is the key to helping our customers overcome these. To make this happen, we remain as dedicated as ever to advancing further this technology.”