Photo courtesy of Omet
A long time ago in the north of Italy, Angelo Bartesaghi, a young designer with a passion for innovation, created a small workshop. He said innovation comes from having the ability to interpret customer requirements and develop them with future perspective—a skill that converts a need into an idea, and then translates that idea into a drawing that passes from the basic technology needed to realize it to the technologies that complete it. Angelo believed the machine was the end result of these factors, which have to be cleverly, efficiently and effectively organized.
The year was 1963, and that small workshop was Omet.
After reaching worldwide success with machines for the production of paper napkins, the first ET 220 marked the company’s entry into the label printing market: it was entirely typographical, like all machines produced by Omet until the mid-1980s, when flexo, from a technology suitable “to smear the paper,” began its slow ascent to the market of printed labels.
Typography is, as flexo, a direct printing technology with the design on the printing plate in relief. At that time machines were basic, mechanical and manually controlled, with a quite poor level of printing quality and die cutting with prepress practically non-existent. In that new field, Omet found the perfect ground to develop flexo printing technology.
The 1980s
In the 1980s, the field of flexographic press manufacturers included American company Mark Andy and European entities like Nilpeter, Comco, Arsoma and Omet. The first step into the future was experimenting with substrates different from paper and self-adhesive—solvent-printed aluminum for yogurt lids, for example—and the widening of the printing width to 13-in. (330-mm.).
[perfectpullquote align=”left” cite=”” link=”” color=”#ff00ff” class=”” size=””]The demand now is not only for flexible and highly automated machines but the combination of mechanics and electronics, embodying the concept of mechatronics. Machines are more complicated, but this sophistication should not lead to pure complexity.
Prepress, from a technical standpoint, was the real architect of flexography’s success and became reliable and qualitatively interesting, thanks to the availability of the first polymeric plates and mounting tapes with different grades of hardness (in the flexo process, where a polymeric plate is used, the cylinder must be able to carry the drops of ink, corresponding to the printed dots, avoiding tearing off, hence the introduction of soft, bi-adhesive tapes).
The year 1982 marked the first in a series of records for Omet. Its ET 420 was the first press with a width of 16.54-in. (420-mm.) suitable for printing both continuous forms with a fan folder final delivery and self-adhesive label rolls. But the real breakthrough for Omet was the “half-moon” flat die. The flat die is present on many different machines on the market but offers unsatisfactory results: it is inaccurate and involves a slowdown of operation, often requiring a second pass. The “half-moon” flat die allows a graduate dosage of the cut stress for more accurate results. This innovation was a sale boom, at least until the introduction of magnetic dies in the late 1980s.
Pressing On
In 1995, Omet presented Multiflex, the first UV flexo machine in widths of 13-in. (330-mm.), 16.54-in. (420-mm.) and 20.47-in. (520-mm.), expandable up to 10 colors and showing the concept of quick job changeover thanks to the presence of an inking removable cassette with an easy sliding operation, during a live demonstration at Labelexpo.
From 1996 on, Omet launched additional finishing groups on the Multiflex press, including cold foil, rotary screen printing and hot stamping. There was also the evolution of Multiflex—Multifilm—addressing printing on thin films (as thin as 12-µ.) for the flexible packaging market. Multiflex and Multifilm lines attracted attention for their quality of flexo printing, and also for complex shades at that time typical of the offset process. Multifilm, while still having mechanical transmission, introduced the first independent motor on the infeed group that improves the tension and enables printing on 12-µ. polyethylene terephthalate (PET) or 20-µ. to 25-µ. biaxially oriented polypropylene (BOPP).
Photo courtesy of Omet
In 1998, during an open house at a customer in France, the Multiboard for the printing of cardboard was launched. Sharing the printing unit with Multifilm, this machine boasted a renewed tension control system and the addition of die cutting and creasing inline.
Just before the turn of century, a real innovation came in 1999 with the launch of Flexy, a flexo machine available in 9.84-in. (250-mm.) and 13-in. (330-mm.) widths, capable of printing with solvent-based or UV inks, and designed specifically for label converters. The machine was entirely mechanical, with a servo motor with gears on the infeed and capable of laminating UV adhesive. Flexy was a compact, low-cost press promoting fast job changes.
In 2004, the Flexy line was enriched with Flexy-S, with two servo motors on each printing unit. The Flexy press (more than 150 installations worldwide) was among the first machines suitable for printing special products: in the configuration with two unwinders, for example, it could print inline coupons and multilayer labels.
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