FTS showcases Legacy press at Open Day

Flexographic Trade Services has held a two-day Open House event at its Fort Mill, South Carolina facility, which included over 20 table-top displays from many of the industry's leading suppliers, the majority of which have been vendor sponsors since the trade school was established in 2000.

Art Fields, founder and president of FTS, started the event by announcing that the school was again accepting students for their three-month flexo press operator course, and would be holding its popular two-day intro to flexo and intro to pre-press courses starting this month.

All potential students are put through a rigorous evaluation and mechanical aptitude test that must be passed before they can be considered for any of FTS's programs. In the last decade FTS has been able to put several hundred graduates into good paying jobs throughout the flexo industry and in several cases has been instrumental to helping many set up their own business in the narrow web market.

Fields explained that for the past year he and his team, plus several key vendors, have been involved in the design and build of a new narrow web flexo press, the Legacy LG10.

Field's further explained that a separate company had been formed called Legacy Press Company LLC, and in keeping with the FTS rules had become a vendor sponsor of the school with the installation of its first LG10 eight-color press complete with sheeter, laminator, turn-bar, waste wind up and die section conveyor. F

ields also announced that the first LG13, eight-color 13in Legacy press is in the process of being built and has been purchased by Subtle Impressions, based in Gastonia, South Carolina.

All visitors to the event were given a tour of Legacy's design, fabrication and assembly partner Dynamic Design Solutions based on the same street as FTS. Fields introduced some of the key vendors that had partnered with Legacy Press Company in building the Legacy presses, which included Martin Automatic, Aztech Converting, AAA Press, Boge Compressed Air Systems , Kocher + Beck, coordinated by Legacy's lead engineer Andy Kunik.

The Legacy press range will include the LG10,LG13 and LG13F film press.

On display at the school were products from AAA Press, Acucote, Air Trim, Allison Systems, Boge Compressors, Environmental Inks, FLXON, Harper Corporation, JM Heaford, KLaser, Kocher + Beck, Lohmann Tapes, Luminite, Martin Automatic, Matthias Paper, Pitman, The Flexo Factor and Wikoff Color. Dupont exhibited its products and gave live demonstrations of the Thermoflex plate making exposure unit as well as Esko's Spark CDI system that they have provided for use by the school's students during their training programs.

During the event the LG10 press was run continuously showing off its hot air, UV IR drying, slitting, sheeting, die-cutting and re-registration capabilities. This included a seven-color die-cut label, five-color die-cut school calendar that all printed in perfect registration. This was further proved when Chris Averitt, FTS School program director and trainer was able to run the same job through a second time and re-register the final color to the previously printed job.

The LG10's modular construction was also demonstrated in being able to take out complete print and die sections and place in different positions, accomplished in less than 15 minutes per station without the use of sophisticated software and servo technology.