Flexography

Frequently used for printing on plastic, foil, acetate film, brown paper, and other materials used in packaging, flexography or flexographic printing uses flexible printing plates made of rubber or plastic. The inked plates with aslightly raised image are rotated on a cylinder which transfers the image to the substrate. Flexography uses fast-drying inks, is a high-speed print process, can print on many types of absorbent and non-absorbent materials, and can print continuous patterns (such as for giftwrap and wallpaper).Some typical applications for flexography are paper and plastic bags, milk cartons, disposable cups, and candy bar wrappers. Flexography printing may also be used for envelopes, labels, and newspapers.Originally, flexographic printing was rudimentary in quality. Labels requiring high quality have generally been printed using the offset process until recently

The greatest advances in flexographic printing have been in the area of photopolymer printing plates, including improvements to the plate material and the method of plate creation.Digital direct to plate systems have been a good improvement in the industry recently. Laser-etched ceramic anilox rolls also play a part in the improvement of print quality. Full-color picture printing is now possible, and some of the finer presses available today, in combination with a skilled operator, allow quality that rivals the lithographic process. One ongoing improvement has been the increasing ability to reproduce highlight tonal values, thereby providing a workaround for the very high dot gain associated with flexographic printing.