They’re so easy to spot. Gear marks in flexographic printing appear as alternating linear areas of light and dark running perpendicular to the web direction on your press. These nearly always occur in regular intervals across the substrate.
We can’t stress enough that flexographic printing is a pressure-sensitive process. If pressure is not applied correctly and uniformly from your print cylinder to the substrate, you’re bound to experience flexo printing defects.
Dot gain is a tricky flexo printing defect with a variety of causes. As its name implies, the dots on your printed substrate increase in size. The reproduced image then comes out darker and sometimes fuzzier than intended.
And now for the printing problem we’d all love to eat. Okay, so doughnuts in this case are an aggravating and potentially costly flexo printing defect, as opposed to a delicious confectionery treat.
The practice of direct laser engraving (DLE) sleeves, cylinders, and plates is emerging at the forefront of the flexographic printing industry.
You may notice areas of your substrate don’t print fully, sometimes leaving tiny unprinted areas about the size of a pinhole. Quite appropriately, this common flexographic printing defect is called pinholing.
You likely recall the flexo printing evolution through the years in response to pressures from economy and demand. As industries produced more, they required more packaging (of different varieties). And as they’ve required more packaging, they’ve...
Let’s say you’re printing fine text or an intricate graphic with a high resolution. Your substrate comes off the press, and you notice letters or the areas within the graphics that bleed together for a very low-quality, low-resolution product.
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Is your substrate coming off the press with prints that are either too light or entirely missing in sections? That’s what we in the business call skip out, very common among flexo printing defects.
There’s an equation for printing success. Too much press downtime while troubleshooting defects isn’t a part of it. Wasted time is wasted money.
This diagnostic chart helps you quickly hone in on your flexo printing defects and their likely...
