Digital Printing-Toner Sheetfed

The creative team from a customer of Steinhauser Inc., a Newport, KY-based printer of labels and flexible packaging, was shown several bottles decorated with the same label. They were asked to determine which were printed flexo and which were digital.

Xeikon Cafe to highlight the latest trends and innovations in digital label production.

It began with fan belt sleeves. Fred Arnold was meeting with a purchasing agent at Goodyear Tire and Rubber's Lincoln, Nebraksa plant. The agent, whose desk was strewn with fan belt sleeves, threw one at Arnold, then a partner at Fairbury Printing in Fairbury, Nebraska. "I need to print part numbers and bar codes on all these sleeves," he said. "If you can do that you'll have all my business."

In our cover story this month we meet Fred Arnold of McBattas Packaging and Printing in Fairbury, Nebraska. As he describes it, Fairbury (pop. 3,942) isn’t near anything. A couple hours southwest of Omaha and a long ride on two-lane roads from Interstate 80, it is not a place where you’d expect to find state-of-the-art digital printing. Yet Arnold’s company produces a wide range of folding cartons using a pair of Xerox iGen presses, occasionally augmented by an offset press.