October 2002 Issue
Cad, Cam ... COM
There's some new tools for connectivity and commerce in the world of computer-aided design and manufacturing for packaging. "WHAT'S NEW IN CAD/CAM?" I recently asked this question to Don Skenderian, the man in charge of the most widely used packaging CAD program in the universe. Expecting a more technically oriented, CAD-specific response, I was surprised to get an answer right out of our telecommuted, Internet-age lexicon. He said: "Connectivity." Skenderian—and every other product development director I interviewed for this article—believes that the most important work going on in computer-assisted design and diemaking is collecting, collating, and communicating CAD data to other processes in
EB's Bright Future
Numbers show that the usage of EB inks and equipment are on the rise. Now suppliers are working to get them in the spotlight. "POINTING TO THE significant operations and 'enabling' benefits of the process, suppliers of ultraviolet (UV) and electron beam (EB) technology are bullish on near-term growth prospects," says the RadTech biennial survey North American Market Update. "Survey respondents, including over 80 industry suppliers and end users, project market growth of six to nine percent each year over the next three years ... and report growth of UV- and EB-formulated product usage up over eight percent during the two-year period 2000
pP's 2002 TLMI Converter of the Year
LGInternational's Lon Martin can add packagePRINTING's TLMI 2002 Converter of the Year Award to a long list of accomplishments. FOUNDING ONE SUCCESSFUL company is difficult enough, but starting all over and building a second company from scratch might be more than one person could handle. Not so for Lon Martin, LGInternational's founder and CEO. He has two business successes included in his long resume in the label printing industry and would be a good case study for the risk/reward equation—the greater the risk, the greater the reward. Mike Dowling, TLMI president and president of CL & D Graphics has seen Martin's success story first
Working Overtime to Eliminate Downtime
Time is money and wide-web flexo suppliers continue to try and save as much of each as they can. LIKE IT OR not, society has become a place where everybody wants something now (or better yet, yesterday), leading to fax machines, cell phones, PDAs, laptop computers, and microwave ovens. Time is money and any wasted time is the same as playing three card monty in Times Square, i.e. wasted money. With the cost of operating wide-web flexo presses still relatively high, converters must find ways to increase press uptime and efficiency. How and where to find this improved productivity is the $64,000 question,
