Weyerhaeuser’s Flexo Printing Facilities Streamline Plate Mounting

by Jim McMahon

Flexographic printing had long been considered a low-quality printing system, but a mainstay for the printing of packaging containers, such as corrugated boxes and flexible packaging like food bags, shopping bags, and self-adhesive labels. Technical developments over the past few decades in the flexo printing process have improved print quality, such as by enhancing the ability to reproduce highlight tonal values, working around the very high dot gain associated with flexo printing, and by making accessible 4+ color applications. But, the systems for the mounting and calibration of flexographic plates onto printing cylinders had not evolved technologically, that is, substantially enough to provide for quick and highly accurate mounting of the flexible printing plates.