Labeltronix installs Kodak’s Flexcel NX platemaking system

Labeltronix, of Orange, California, has installed a Flexcel NX digital flexographic platemaking system from Kodak. The company built its business using digital technology, expanding recently into flexo to meet extend its offerings into longer runs and more complex label jobs.

‘The print quality we’re able to achieve with Flexcel NX plates is the best I’ve seen in the flexographic industry,’ said Mark Gaw, Labeltronix general manager. ‘The ink transfer is excellent. We print on a lot of difficult substrates including uncoated stock, which is one of the industry’s most challenging surfaces, and have no problem producing very high-quality results with the Flexcel NX plates.’

Labeltronix operates Lean Labeling, a strategy that enables the ordering of labels on demand at a fixed price. John Trail, Labeltronix president, credits the Flexcel NX plates with helping the company operate at optimum efficiency, while eliminating many of the traditional limitations imposed by the flexo process.

‘Typically, the challenge flexo printers have is that when we’re printing very small dots, compression can cause us to lose some quality throughout the course of a run,’ explained Trail. ‘We have not seen this with the Flexcel NX plates. We don’t see any degradation in print quality from the beginning to the end of long runs, and the repeatability is excellent. On some jobs, we’re in excess of a million impressions on the plates.’

Flexcel NX plates use the Kodak Flexcel NX thermal imaging layer in conjunction with flexographic plate material. Using Kodak Squarespot imaging technology, dots as small as 10 microns are imaged onto the Flexcel NX thermal imaging layer. Laminating the thermal imaging layer to the Flexcel NX plate eliminates all oxygen between the layer and the plate, allowing the formation of stable, full-amplitude, flat-top dots.

Click here for more stories about Kodak on L&L.com.