Apex, Esko, Sun Chemical, Dupont, Cauchos Puntes and Comexi Host Workshop

Apex, Esko, Sun Chemical, Dupont, Cauchos Puntes and Comexi joined together in a successful practical session in the Comexi Technological center to analyze advantages of expanded gamut versus direct color printing.
 
Better changeover times, waste reduction, ink savings, reduced wash-ups, and higher quality printing are just some of the main advantages that expanded gamut (EG) printing system offers compared to direct colour printing. These benefits were showed during the technical day that Apex, Esko, Sun Chemical, Dupont, Cauchos Puntes and Comexi organized at Manel Xifra Boada Technological Centre in March.
 
A total of 10 experts from six different partner companies joined in a practical session that consisted of printing a set of planned jobs in continuous simulating a work shift. All these jobs were originally printed in spot colors but for this exercise they were converted into expanded gamut (multicolor) color separation.
 
Previously the Comexi F2 MP was characterized under agreed parameters of anilox, inks, plate and tape. The target of this exercise was to print in an efficient way and under fixed quality standards, monitoring step by step relevant specific data in terms of job cost: changeover time, waste material and ink and solvent consumption.
 
Through these analyses and evaluations, technical specialists have been able to verify that the expanded gamut system increases efficiency and achieves higher profitability and better-quality packaging than multicolor system. It offers solvent savings since EG printing only needs seven colors and, therefore, there is no need for wash-up in between jobs. This printing system reduces set-up times and enables to run more jobs, increasing machine uptime and capacity.
 
As a summary, the more relevant data were a reduction of 60% changeover time, a reduction of 50% of waste material and decrease of 20% in ink cost.
 
Besides, during the technical day, the experts confirmed that expanded gamut allows to run many shades of different colors at the same time, which results in a reduction of the number of changeovers per day, increasing the press up time.
 
“Demand for shorter packaging production runs for targeted campaigns and product variations is increasing. Printers and converters need to meet these challenges in a time and cost-effective way and EG system is the proper way to achieve it,” said Albert López, Comexi Technological Centre manager.