Imageworx succeeds at mission impossible

'The Art of Magic' stamp stamps were the first United states postal stamps ever printed flexo and the first to exploit 3D micro-optical printing. Photo Miraclon

At kickoff sight, specializing in the impossible doesn't await like the best way to build a profitable long-term business. For Pennsylvania-based prepress house Imageworx, even so, information technology's a strategy that has proved highly successful for more than two decades.

To understand what achieving the impossible looks like, consider the winning entry of Imageworx in Miraclon's Global Flexo Innovation Awards. 'The Art of Magic' postage stamps were notable for ii remarkable 'firsts' — they were the first United states postal stamps always printed flexo and the start to exploit 3D micro-optical press. Unveiled in Las Vegas by the United States Postal service — and globe-famous magician David Copperfield — 3 of the stamps featured animated 3D furnishings, including a white rabbit popping out of a tiptop hat.

Technically challenging

Micro-optical lens press is technically challenging at the best of times and would exist regarded by many every bit beyond the capabilities of flexo. Jeff Toepfer of Imageworx explains, "Producing art and plates to apply with microlenses is an extremely difficult imaging process, calling for the highest level of precision. To run across the resolution requirements for the stamps, we had to paradigm 139,500 interlaced pixels across the web — and do so with perfect 1:1 pixel integrity to produce the interference patterns that create the illusion of movement."

He adds that, to the best of his knowledge, Imageworx is the merely prepress company in the world currently offering micro-optical lens array prepress for flexograp

Jeff Toepfer of Imageworx Photo Miraclon

hy. He also gives due credit to the Kodak Flexcel NX technology, "Nix else tin can produce such small images on a flexo plate. Without it, our success in micro-imaging would exist very limited. It's incredible."

Professional curiosity

If you lot wait beyond the winning entry and into the Imageworx story, it comes as no surprise that Imageworx pulled it off. Here is a company that places technical design innovation at its center, inspired by what Toepfer describes as "A loftier level of professional person curiosity. Nosotros're constantly working at developing new technologies and improving existing ones." When Jeff's father Jerry founded Imageworx in 1997, he did so with a philosophy that demanded the company keep pushing the boundaries of innovation — namely, that if you assist customers realize their nigh demanding projects, you will have a customer for life.

The business was supplying separations and plates for dry offset and narrow spider web applications at the showtime, but today flexo accounts for 90% of the business organization. However, the focus remains where it's always been, on the quality-minded higher reaches of the market, a segment that Toepfer says is growing steadily thanks to the improvements in flexo technology in contempo years. "What's happened has been evolutionary rather than revolutionary, but no less profound for that. Every component — ink, medico blades, aniloxes, plate mounting, imaging, plates, and presses — has steadily improved. As a result, quality is no longer an effect, and flexo is now an economical print process of choice."

Stunning quality

And the quality that Imageworx achieves is truly stunning. The company produces plates capable of holding micro text equally small equally 1/4-betoken and images and holds dots all the way down to 0.2% at 175-line screens. Its proprietary 'SERO HDM' make of hybrid screening engineering science produces perfectly smooth gradations and an extended tonal range, without edges where the dot breaks down. This enables a nearly imperceptible fade to cypher, eliminating the need to hold a minimum dot in not-printed areas to avoid the hard break formerly common in flexo. Besides 3D eyes, these capabilities take opened up other new markets such as security printing, too as delivering exceptional quality levels in process color printing.

Imageworx' Flexcel NX System Photo Miraclon

The "professional curiosity" mentioned earlier means Imageworx doesn't wait for new markets and applications to come up knocking but seeks them out proactively through an R&D department tasked with identifying markets likely to do good from the company'south advanced flexo technology. The adjacent step is to identify the marketplace's requirements, develop a suitable product, then exam and perfect it.

For print trials, Imageworx partners with flexo printing manufacturer MPS, previously using the latter'southward demonstration facility in Green Bay, Wisconsin. "The acid exam of any new idea takes place on the press," says Toepfer, "and then agreement what happens in the pressroom is essential. The Art of Magic stamps are a good example — in pre-production trials, at MPS, we successfully ran the chore at the 250-feet-per-minute speed the customer demanded."

A flexo future for flexible packaging

Looking to the future, Jeff Toepfer expects Imageworx's recent rapid expansion into new markets and applications will continue, equally flexo steadily wins work from offset and gravure. "In the wide web market place, the major tendency we see is migration from more expensive gravure technology."

On the back of this, he adds, Imageworx is now making significant inroads into the flexible packaging sector. "In simply a few years, we've seen strong growth in flexibles, to the bespeak where they at present business relationship for around 35% of our piece of work, mostly compress-wrap and bag materials for consumer products."

He attributes the success to the combination of Kodak Flexcel NX and SERO HDM. "Broad web printers take oft struggled to reproduce highlight dots. SERO and Flexcel NX enable high-resolution imaging and finely tuned, microscopic dot structures, broadening the color gamut for flexo printers by delivering a smoother breakdown of highlight dots. We have the power to determine ideal dot structures on the plates, delivering top-quality results on short-run jobs. We can too employ divide screening algorithms that maintain dot stability on long runs, even across one meg impressions."

Toepfer adds that productivity increases. "Printing speed is a major purchasing factor in flexible packaging pre-printing and plates. Sero HDM and Flexcel NX have allowed some customers to increase running-speeds past upward to 500 anxiety a minute."

Physical evidence of confidence

The visitor's recent move into a new 31,500 square foot facility is concrete show of that confidence, based on what he regards every bit the overwhelming economic logic in favor of flexo. The facility includes the new Flexo Excellence Heart, with an MPS press enabling all future testing to be on-site for faster feedback in their testing and rapid development. "If people inquire me if we have a strategy for persuading clients to move work to flexo, I reply that we don't need to. Nosotros promote flexo, of grade, distributing print samples showing the quality flexo achieves on difficult images. All the same, in the concluding analysis, the economic reality is inescapable — flexo is a more economical technology for the end-user, and one that no longer calls for a compromise on quality."

"Market credence can exist slower than we'd like, but sooner or subsequently, if the heir-apparent is impress-savvy and experienced, all print jobs wind upwards with the process that most benefits the chore. If someone wants 2,000 labels, it's probably a digital task; if it's 2 million, that's flexo; 200 1000000, peradventure gravure. Print quality is not the event, and so economics drives the buying decisions. Nosotros will overcome this through the value flexo offers."

He likewise expects the equipment investment cycle at printers and converters to work in flexo'south favor. "Older equipment is beingness replaced with new applied science capable of improve register, more than consistent print, and easier ready-upwards. All in all, it's simply a affair of fourth dimension earlier the decision to supercede offset and gravure for more relevant products will become obvious and unavoidable."

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