FORUM 2023 Preview: Flexographic Essentials

FORUM 2023 Session Spotlight

Wednesday, April 19, 2023
8:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m.
Flexographic Essentials

Session Chairs: Brad Gasque, DuPont and Dr. John Anderson, Miraclon

The Slate of Presenters:

• Becky Bunch, MacDermid Graphics Solutions
• Kenny Tucker, Clemson University
• Zachery Blackburn, Central Piedmont Community College

When setting up a new flexographic press or when changing a major print component, it is highly recommended the printer follows FIRST methodology.

Flexographic Image Reproduction Specifications & Tolerances (FIRST) outlines the steps of optimization, fingerprinting, process control, characterization and process improvement. Each of these steps builds on the previous step, so you can say that optimization is the foundation that will determine success in your flexographic printing process.

For this reason, FTA’s FORUM typically has a session covering the optimization process to ensure that, as an industry, we always make sure to build the print process on a strong foundation of continuous improvements and solid fundamentals.

FORUM 2023 is no different and we once again will have a session covering the fundamentals of flexography, called “Flexographic Essentials.” It will provide a sound understanding of the key components and activities of the entire flexographic process—from prepress to printing actions and their interactions. Key understanding of fundamentals is necessary even before initiating the optimization step of FIRST methodology. So, we can say that a sound understanding of the entire flexographic process is the bedrock of the foundation.

As each component of the printing process changes over time and new technologies are introduced, it’s important to have a good understanding of these fundamentals.

• You may have been in this industry for 25+ years and have a great understanding of every aspect of flexography. Still, you must ask yourself: Are you up to date on the advancements and changes throughout recent years?
• Maybe you have always been involved in the narrow web industry and are moving to wide web. Ask yourself: Do you think each component is the same between these two press variations?
• Automation has touched almost every part of the printing process: From automated prepress workflows to robotics that feed a new job and setup to a press. Learn—hands-on—how automation is making processes more efficient and repeatable

The “Flexographic Essentials” session will be using live prepress and press demonstrations to show:

• Common aspects and differences in narrow and wide web printing
• The latest enhancements of the key components of flexography
• How the components interact with each other to produce quality print

They say, as adults, the best way to learn is by doing—performing an action—but, we can’t really make plates or run a press on stage. However, we can walk through live demonstrations of each process to offer our best effort at learning by doing.

Along with learning from the demonstrations, attendees will walk away with useful documents and tools to be used for process control and improvement. We hope that these takeaways will be something attendees can take back to their operations and immediately put into action.

A simple checklist in each step of the printing process can be the deciding factor between success and failure. Often, we see operations with the right measurement devices in production, but the measurements aren’t being recorded in a way that’s useful. We hope to provide tools to help with these challenges for the attendees.

This session also looks to help promote understanding for people increasingly asked to cover or make decisions on more parts of the production; whether prepress, print or conversion, for labels, wide web flexible packaging, cartons or corrugated. The advances in automation and the separation of processes are blurring as the industry increasingly needs cross-functional skills for the modern flexographic personnel. All of these are based around process standardization, innovation and simplification wherever possible. Similarly, all encourage minimizing waste and costs to make flexography—packaging’s print process of choice—efficient and profitable.

At the end of this session, we hope attendees will walk away with a sound understanding of the fundamentals of flexography. Plus, they will have identified tools to use for process control/improvement, and a firm foundation to implement FIRST methodology, making it possible to capitalize on its benefits throughout their teams and processes.

Learn more about all FORUM 2023’s sessions and register to attend the conference at forum.flexography.org.