The major Italian manufacturers of Flexo printing machines have chosen, once again, to work with Digital Flex, company specialised in flexographic prepress, for the realisation of the printing plates being used at drupa. Digital Flex will use its Flexo HD Plus technology to create extremely high quality flexographic plates, with 4000 dpi resolution, on CTP Esko CDI HD systems and Nyloflex NEXT Flint Group exposure units.

Flexo HD Plus® is the trademark registered by Digital Flex in Europe. It certifies that the flexographic plate is produced with high definition digital systems and has the advantage of having a 'flat top' dot. The main benefits of this system are the chromatic and tonal perfection of images, sharpness of logos, readability of texts and management of nuances, with greater gradualness to obtain a wider chromatic range plus exceptional ink transfer in the solid backgrounds and screened areas, consistent printing during the entire print run and greater control of dot gain.

“At Digital Flex we have developed this system to offer the customers a quality comparable to that obtained in the gravure process,” explains Andrea Vergnano, partner and Senior Executive Vice President of Digital Flex. The production of the Flexo HD Plus® plates is done in two phases: Ablation phase of the plate - The Esko CDI units installed in Digital Flex use 4000 dpi optics with Pixel Plus lenses which make it possible to achieve a more accurate focus and make micro-ablations on the lam, resulting in the micro-cells on the finished plate.

Exposition phase through UV LED - The Nyloflex® NEXT technology of the Flint Group provides a precise reproduction of the digital data on a printing plate. With a first UV LED exposure, polymerization of the surface is obtained, before the spreading of oxygen, and therefore a correct structure of the flat dot and the micro-cells is obtained. During the following passes, the relief is created. The two world manufacturers of flexo machines have already tested them for a while and, having verified the quality of the results, have decided to use them for the demonstrations at drupa. “There is a close partnership both with KBA-Flexotecnica and UTECO,” comments Andrea Vergnano. “The two companies have asked us to also develop the creative study of the tests present at drupa, which was created by Futurflexo, the graphic agency of Nuova Roveco Group”.