White & Gillespie installs Creo CTP for flexo

An open house in Melbourne on July 8 at one of the industry’s best known packaging specialist prepress suppliers, will usher in a new era of high quality digital flexographic platemaking when White & Gillespie unveils its ThermoFlex Wide II.

The installation and premiere is the culmination of almost two years of research of competing imaging technologies by Geoff White, CEO, which was finally decided by a meeting in Vancouver with laser guru and Creo founder, Dan Gelbert.

“Before leaving Australia we were pretty much confused by the claim and counter claim made by the vendor representatives,” relates Geoff White. “One major area of contention between the two imaging technologies was imaging system depth of field. Esko and Hell use fibre laser and these units have exceptional depth of field. This effectively means that no auto-focus mechanism is required where this technology is used.

“Creo’s technology uses an optical system to shape the beam, and the depth of field is such that without an auto-focus system this technology would struggle to meet our stringent manufacturing requirements. To our delight, whilst in Vancouver, we were given access to Creo’s founder and laser guru, Dan Gelbart. Dan’s technical knowledge in the area of lasers is amazing and he was able to iron out any concerns we had about the technology. . . . After weighing up all the issues it became obvious to us that the Creo unit provided the best foundation for quality flexographic plate manufacture.”

The company installed its Creo ThermoFlex Wide II running BASF Nyloflex Ace plate material. Visitors to the Open House will be able to see the system in operation and judge the results for themselves.

According to Geoff White the original decision to make the move to digital flexographic platemaking came as a result of market demand.

“The market dictates what we do because we’re a service organization, and the market decided emphatically they wanted digital plates. Although we were able to offer very good product with our analogue plates, the market was telling us they wanted digital There are definite quality improvements in digital plates,” he said.

White & Gillespie chose the ThermoFlex Wide II because it fully met their needs: industry-leading productivity, consistent imaging times between plates of different thickness, fastest sleeve-imaging currently available and increased process control. The ThermoFlex solution offers decreased plate loading/unloading time, and allows the operator to image multiple plates at the same time since it is not necessary to mask the unused area of the drum.

As well, platemaking productivity is not sacrificed on thicker flexographic plates. The ThermoFlex provides the fastest sleeve-imaging currently available, imaging sleeves, as well as plates and film, and features semi-automatic changeovers from sleeve imaging to plate imaging. In addition, its slow drum rotation prevents vibration and balance problems, and such resulting issues as print artifacts, plate fly-off and reduced imaging consistency.

White & Gillespie saw the move to digital in terms of increased quality, cost savings, and an opportunity to grow the business. “Logically that will happen because we will supply analogue and digital plates,” said Geoff White. “We expect to convert a number of customers over to digital where it is more suitable, but we also see growth in the market place and hope to gain new digital clients.”

If you are interested in seeing the latest in flexo digital imaging
next week, contact:

Andrew Adams
National Sales & Marketing Manager
Ph: (03) 94604522

AdamsA@flexo.com.au