How Cyber Graphics Perfects Prepress & Protects Brands

No surprises, no excuses.” “No headaches, no fingerpointing.” “No unnecessary rework and no paying for someone else’s mistakes.”

Those are the pledges Cyber Graphics makes to its customers. The team, whether based in Memphis, Cleveland, Milwaukee, Nashville or Neenah, stands in unison in saying it “prides itself on delivering precision to an imprecise industry.”

To put it more succinctly, the staff embraces the motto “Perfecting prepress; protecting brands.” The slogan speaks to what the entire organization believes to be a true competitive advantage. It promises “no compromises in quality” and guarantees “packaging done right—right away.” To them, results must be “Predictable. Repeatable. Unbeatable.”

Established in 1994, Cyber Graphics is a prepress trade shop that knows flexographic plates and is familiar with what happens on a pressroom floor. This long-time FTA member, affiliated with the Association since 1996, works with well-known brand owners, large printers and converters, and design agencies, supplying digital photopolymer plates, plate-on-sleeve solutions, seamless in-the-round (ITR) photopolymer, laser engraving, along with design, prototyping, color management and other prepress creative services.

Walking the Walk

Originally the plate making division of film and flexible packaging manufacturer Bryce Corp, Cyber Graphics is today a stand-alone business with more than 120 employees spread over its four locations in Tennessee and Wisconsin. Around 70 percent of customers can be found in the flexible packaging sector, but the company also serves label (20 percent) and folding carton (10 percent) converters with high-quality solvent flexographic plates. End-use applications are mainly for the food, beverage, pet food and pharmaceutical markets.

“We are an independent packaging prepress trade shop focusing on serving major converters across North America, but we still operate with a printer’s mindset and are very proactive, which goes way back to the days of being Bryce’s in-house plate making department. Most of our employees have hands-on experience of flexographic print production, and they know the difficulties our customers are up against every day and how to address any potential issues head on,” explains Kevin Bourquin, VP operations.

Elaborating on that point, Cyber Graphics’ website explains, “When it comes to printing, we talk the talk and walk the walk. We know that when packaging graphics are designed with print production in mind, we can speed time-to-market and reduce costs.”

PQM Workflow

Print quality management stands at the core of the five-location enterprise. Critical to its success is a commitment to, “Ask the right questions. Gather the right specifications. Build the right workflows and take every measure to ensure accuracy and repeatability.” Included among specifics are the following:

• Take approved and mechanically assembled art and convert it into press-optimized layouts
• Apply various screens to improve and control TVI and ink laydown on plate imaging files
• Mask, clone and assemble image parts to create a realistic image
• Adjust file construction to account for process, substrate and printer variables
• Benchmark and fingerprint a set of print conditions to accurately predict color
• Measure, analyze and report data on printed packaging to a set of tolerances
• Manage press approval at a printer on behalf of the brand

With all of that accomplished, Cyber Graphics credits its color separation expertise as being responsible for “files that are mechanically sound, print friendly and on brand.” As a result, it says, “Expectations are met upstream. Re-engineering is avoided downstream. Time and money are saved.”

Automation’s Impact

Cyber Graphics operates four automated plate processing lines, which allow for printing plates to be shipped out to customers the next day. “Just-in-time delivery is crucial for our customers, so we rely on a very high level of automation to ensure we have the productivity and the consistency that these converters need to serve their brand owner customers,” says Bourquin.

“Everyone works to a very fast-changing schedule in today’s market, so maximum flexibility and fastest turnaround are top priorities,” he continues. “Having that extra speed really helps offset some of the challenges we are currently facing when it comes to getting the plate delivered to the customer.”

It’s that concern that prompted a recent capital investment—purchase and delivery of a new XSYS ThermoFlexX Catena-WDLS (washer, dryer, light-finisher and stacker), which arrived in Memphis this past June as the first of its kind in North America.

Crediting the installation with, “more than living up to expectations,” Bourquin explains the rationale behind the move. “Due to the pandemic, we had to go ahead with the decision to buy the Catena-WDLS without seeing it live; instead, we experienced its superior technology through videos and saw it operate via conference calls, where we had the opportunity to drill down into all the features. Now it is here and even better than we anticipated,” he says.

He adds, “What has been most impressive about the installation so far is that we were putting production jobs through the WDLS in a matter of days. Usually, it takes weeks to implement new processing technology and get it working seamlessly, but the machine just slotted in, and we were up and running in no time.”

Taking many variables out of the equation, including operator handling of plates between each of the processes, the ThermoFlexX Catena-WDLS is fully automated. This means that after loading a plate into the system, no further intervention is required until the fully finished plate comes out. “It is so user-friendly and intuitive to use,” says Bourquin about the feedback from the factory floor. Current expectations are that the new plate production line will boost productivity by as much as 15 percent.

He continues, “If you’re serving multiple customers around the country, automation is paramount for controlling costs, quality and waste; it also means your team can focus on value-added tasks instead of minding the machine. With the new line, we don’t need to pull the plate out to inspect it during the process, because we know we’re going to get the result we want.” An added benefit: Sealed operation keeps all solvent fumes contained for a safer working environment. To lower the environmental impact, the company is also able to reclaim in excess of 93 percent of the solvent and distill it into fresh solvent.

Bourquin took pride in delivering another Cyber Graphics’ assurance: “We have been the first with many new developments over the years, such as LED plate exposure, which we introduced back in 2013. Now we are the first to leverage the power of the WDLS.” In a further nod to automation’s benefits, he confides, “We had a major outage in 2019 when a machine broke down and our other sites had to cover for a full 11 days. We just can’t afford for that to happen again. The ThermoFlexX ProServeX cloud-based monitoring service, which features predictive maintenance, will prevent such incidents in the future and that’s incredibly reassuring.”