Brotech to debut FFX AI flexo press in North America

Brotech Digital Graphics will make the North American debut of its FFX AI flexo printing platform and SDD PLUS three-station automatic die-cutting system at Loupe Americas 2026 in Chicago, with live demonstrations throughout the show.

At the center of the FFX platform is SmartColor AI, a closed-loop color management system developed by combining AVT's in-line inspection and color data acquisition technology with X-Rite's color management and verification capabilities. Rather than treating color measurement and correction as separate steps, the system runs them as a continuous loop, measuring color on the running web, evaluating deviation against the job target and correcting press parameters without stopping the press. The system uses a reinforcement-learning platform, with each job adding to the press's model of how a given substrate, ink set and anilox combination behaves, turning successful production parameters into reusable digital recipes rather than operator-dependent knowledge.

The FFX 430 on the show floor is an eight-color servo-driven press running at speeds up to 250 m/min, handling substrates from 12 micron to 400 micron across unsupported films, heavier carton and synthetic stocks on a single platform.

The SDD PLUS is the first three-station automatic die-cutting system on the market, with four die-cutting heads per station, totaling 12 heads. Unlike single- or twin-station systems, the three-station architecture distributes jobs across stations and runs them in parallel rather than queuing through one station, targeting converters whose short-run and versioned work is bottlenecked at finishing. Running standard pressure-sensitive materials at speeds up to 35 m/min, the system uses a vision system to locate the printed image and position the cut, with die line files and print imposition data imported directly to eliminate manual setup. Die cutting data is also logged into a reinforcement-learning model, improving cut accuracy and setup speed on recurring work.

Ramon Lee, CEO of Brotech Digital Graphics, will present on the Loupe Americas Spotlight Stage on September 15 from 12:00 to 12:20 pm.

'The goal was never to replace the flexo expert,' said Lee. 'It was to capture what the expert knows, turn it into data, and make that knowledge repeatable across shifts, presses and sites. Measuring color in line is not new — acting on the measurement automatically and remembering what was learned is the part that changes the economics. Every job generates data, every job builds knowledge, and the next job starts from a better position.'