On-reel Flexo

Flexography is printing directly from a relief (raised surface) plate. The plate is made from a photopolymer material, the image area being hardened by a u.v. light source exposed through a negative film. The plate is then scrubbed in a solvent to remove the non-image areas, dried in an oven and finally post-exposed using germicidal ‘type c’ u.v. lamps to detackify the plate.

Due to the small size of the print cylinders which hold the 1.7mm thick plate, the image stretches on the surface so a circle becomes a long oval, therefore we shrink the image going around to a short oval to print a proper circle.

The printing and die-cutting is done on our Mark Andy machines in one operation. Once the labels are cut to shape the waste skeleton is removed and the roll master is slit into individual reels.

We use low-odour environmentally-friendly water-based inks. The ink is transferred to the plate via a ceramic anilox roller. These rollers have cells which hold the ink, the excess being removed by a flexible steel doctor blade so the amount of ink transferring to the plate is metered. We stock a variety of anilox rolls which differ in cell depths and cell quantity per square centimetre.

The Daily Mail is printed by flexography and the ink does not transfer to your clothes and furniture which is possible with other newspapers printed by web-offset.