It certainly is an exciting time to be a part of the world of flexographic printing. Print results are being achieved today that would have been determined unimaginable by this process as recently as a couple years ago. Even more exciting is to be a part of the team that is making this possible...with the award- winning Kodak Flexcel NX Digital Flexographic System.



I had the opportunity in early March to be onsite for the printing of the Canadian Printer magazine "over-cover" at the Cenveo McLaren Morris and Todd facility in Mississauga, Ontario. Given the rare chance to demonstrate the current capabilities of the flexo print process compared side by side to the traditional offset-printed magazine cover, the enhanced reproduction gamut enabled by the Flexcel NX system proved itself once again!

With challenging four color process graphics expertly prepared by the staff at Autumn Graphics, and printing on what can be considered as a somewhat unforgiving substrate, it was immediately recognized by everyone present how quickly the job came up to and fell into color match. Of greater significance is that the graphics were output with screening of 20 micron stochastic on the outside and 200 line AM on the inside-all reproduced in four color process and printed in-line over a printed white. Attempting to pull something like this off before the introduction of Flexcel NX in this industry would likely have seldom been considered possible.

What had been scheduled for the possibility of an all-day "tweak and coax" was wrapped up and mission accomplished in only a couple hours. A great deal of the credit for this, naturally, goes to Marcelo Marziali and his staff at Cenveo, as well as Ben Abray and the folks at Autumn. While it does require the right combination of components to accomplish these types of results, Flexcel NX proved to be the enabler.

With Flexcel NX providing the capability for expanded tonal range and repeatable, consistent results, flexo is reaching uncharted waters in competing with offset and gravure on a daily basis and providing even greater value for our customers.