Not too long ago, the concept of a hybrid press was considered cutting-edge and not a reliable architecture for label production.
Early days touted a few suppliers with brand new digital press offerings married with traditional flexographic converting equipment.
This combination of digital and analog—the widely accepted definition of a hybrid press—was not without limitation and had many hurdles to overcome to be considered an acceptable, normal label production solution. Specifically:
- Key detractors of hybrid presses, when the technology was first launched, stemmed from the speed, functionality and reliability of the digital inkjet engines at the heart of the press
- Additionally, converting technology, such as semi-rotary die cutters and quick change flexography stations, were still being developed and improved upon
Until these issues were resolved and improved, the return on investment for a hybrid press was hard to attain and did not compete well against standalone digital or flexographic technology.
All photos courtesy of Domino Digital Printing
Fast forward to 2021. Hybrid presses have become a normal part of the conversation for any converter doing due diligence on new press equipment. As the digital inkjet technology core to these hybrid presses evolved, the systems became faster, printed on more materials, had a wider color gamut and provided high levels of uptime.
Additionally, the flexography and die equipment utilized in hybrid presses became quicker to change over and more bespoke to hybrid printing applications. These technological leaps broke down the barriers that prevented a hybrid press from becoming a sound investment.
Stacy Daly, VP & GM at ASL Print FX in Toronto, Canada, recently attested to such a string of events. “When we looked at starting up our facility in Napa, we looked at multiple technologies and platforms. We knew that hybrid presses combine the best of digital and analog printing. It’s a total solution that gives many options, and both Domino and MPS [the option his company chose] have outstanding reputations for quality.”
In fact, many label applications are now far better suited for a hybrid press than traditional flexography-only or digital-only production methods. Let’s dissect what advantages today’s hybrid press technology brings to the label production process and why it is primed to be the must-have technology of the future.
Single-Pass Solution
Modern hybrid presses provide converters a reliable, single-pass production solution that leverages the advantages of digital inkjet printing and the flexibility of a traditional flexographic press. The combination of digital inkjet printing with traditional flexographic printing and converting processes can open the door to new opportunities and the potential to win more business.
Given that a hybrid press is combining the elements of inkjet printing and traditional converting, these statements seem obviously true. This opens the door to a few key questions:
- What run lengths are appropriate for hybrid printing?
- How do production costs compare to hybrid printing?
- What can a hybrid press do that a flexography-only or digital-only press can’t do?
These questions are sensible, and crucial to understanding the advantages of a hybrid press. But like most things in life, these questions do not have straightforward, black and white answers. To address them, we must understand at a core level, two aspects of what a hybrid press actually does:
- Aspect 1: Hybrid presses provide a fully finished, digitally imaged label in a single pass
- Aspect 2: The label image can be produced by digital print, flexographic print or a combination of both
Let’s examine the first core aspect of a fully finished, digitally imaged label in a single pass. The concept of fully printing and converting a label in a single pass is not a new technological advancement. In fact, flexographic presses have been producing labels in this manner for decades. This approach provides both cost and time savings in the production process, as it requires less steps to produce the label, less labor to complete the production steps and less waste from multiple machine setups. Combining the efficiency and waste-reducing nature of a digital inkjet engine, a hybrid press maintains all the single-pass benefits of a flexographic press, while reducing setup time and cost further.
A prime example of this concept in action is multi-SKU work. Jobs that contain multiple versions of labels often share a die pattern and other common converting elements from SKU to SKU. Producing such a job on a flexography-only asset requires that you change plates and complete a makeready for each SKU. This situation often means the press operator is spending more time setting up jobs than printing sellable output.
This type of work, which we consider short run, is ideally suited for digital printing, as the setup, changeover time and cost is greatly reduced. However, a digital-only asset requires a second production step to fully finish the label with necessary die cut, embellishments, etc.
A hybrid press leverages the advantages of each of these processes. Completing this multi-SKU work on a hybrid press allows for just one makeready to complete all SKUs. The operator can conduct a single setup of the die station and any other common static elements utilizing the analog portion of the press, then let the digital engine seamlessly change images from SKU to SKU, without any setup time and cost between SKUs.
The second core aspect of a hybrid press—producing the image with digital and flexography—opens the door to specialized jobs and even long-run work. Digital presses are great because they do not require any setup time or plates to create the image. But the reason all jobs are not printed on digital presses is because as the run lengths increase, the cost per label starts to become higher than producing it with flexography. This stems from the inverse fixed cost and variable costs between the technologies. These typical crossover charts often dictate what is a “digital job” versus “flexographic job” at most converters with each technology.
A hybrid press disrupts this normal logic, as both imaging technologies are at play. This unique combination can allow converters to realize more profit on jobs that would not have been possible with either technology individually.
Spot & Static
To illustrate this point, let’s expand on our multi-SKU job example. Let’s assume that within the artwork of the job, there is a heavy coverage of a certain spot color that remains constant across all SKUs. We understand that our variable (read: ink) cost is higher on digital inkjet than flexography.
But the elimination of the setup time and cost makes this higher ink cost acceptable, up to a certain run length. What if on our hybrid press, we separate the high coverage spot color away from digital and make it a spot flexography color? This spot color would incur a single plate and setup at the beginning of the job, but will greatly reduce the amount of digital ink required per label. This phenomenon will reduce our variable cost while only slightly increasing our fixed cost.
Everything else being the same, this combination of flexography and digital inkjet imaging will push our crossover higher and allow for a more profitable way to produce this job.
This same logic can be applied for long-run variable data jobs. In this case, the converter can produce all static elements of the artwork using flexography and only produce the variable part with digital. This will provide the same outcome of lowering the variable costs, while still being able to use a digital asset to vary the image. As this variable type of work is only possible on digital presses, the profit margin for long-run VDP is substantially higher on a hybrid press than a digital-only asset.
There is one more, often overlooked key advantage this aspect of hybrid printing has over traditional digital production methods. Digital printing 101 tells us that short-run work is more profitable on digital presses compared to flexographic presses. However, some jobs have artwork that is not possible to fully produce on a digital press.
An example of this is a metallic spot color, or a special out-of-gamut spot color. If a converter only has standalone digital and flexographic technology, it would be forced to run this job on the flexographic press, despite the economics telling us it should be a digital job.
Once again, a hybrid press brings a unique advantage to this dilemma. With a hybrid press, the converter can use the flexographic portion of the press to print the specialty color, while utilizing the digital inkjet engine to produce the rest of the image. In this case, our fixed cost is slightly higher than a normal digital-only job, but still drastically lower than setting up for flexography.
Shrink Sleeves
Like the last example, hybrid presses also provide a unique advantage with shrink sleeve printing. Short-run shrink sleeve is one of the fastest growing segments in the label market. Once again, the short-run nature of this work makes it ideally suitable for digital printing, but there are some limitations to be considered when using digital equipment to print shrink labels.
First, shrink labels typically require a reverse print and last-down white ink. Most digital equipment on the market does not have the capability to digitally print a last-down white.
Additionally, the white ink needs to have the proper slip coefficient to apply the shrink sleeve to the can or bottle. Digital inks available today do not have the correct slip-coefficient, so this must be applied in a different manner. Lastly, the white ink on a shrink label tends to be heavy coverage.
These challenges are ideally addressed with a hybrid press. Shifting the white ink to a post-digital flexographic station allows the converter to use a slip white with the proper slip-coefficient as well as apply the white in the needed last-down position. As in our earlier examples, shifting the heavy coverage white to flexography further reduces the variable cost to print. All these things considered make a hybrid inkjet press the ideal tool for producing short-run shrink labels.
Trends & Outlook
Modern hybrid inkjet label presses pack a ton of advantages into a single production asset. As run lengths in the label industry continue to fall, hybrid presses will play a key role to maintain converter profitability and promote growth.
It has been observed that brand owners continue to increase the number of SKUs and level of personalization on their labels, all of which plays to the advantages of hybrid printing equipment. Faster turnaround time requirements and just-in-time inventory programs will continue to place more importance on digital and digital hybrid solutions.
Jonny August, director of operations at Orion Label in Seymour, WI, recently reported, “What excites us about this machine is that it allows us to enter new markets in which we were unable to compete before. Now we can put it on the BossJet, run it and it’s shipped out to our customers. It’s been really exciting to see how operators have taken to this machine. It’s made their jobs easier and they’re running them in a fraction of the time. It’s really exciting to see where technology is leading us.”
The adoption of hybrid presses will continue to increase as converters and brand owners continue to favor the quality and consistency of digital printing as well as the cost and time efficiencies compared to other processes.
As digital presses continue to gain speed and quality, this will further add to the long list of advantages hybrid presses tout. We also see increased innovation from hybrid press suppliers and more partnerships between market-leading inkjet and converting companies. These innovative offerings will continue to provide converters with more choice and flexibility in their operation.
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