Evaluation of Expanded Gamut Printing In Flexography

There is a great need in the packaging industry to produce increasingly smaller lots in a more cost-effective and sustainable way, where the spot color accuracy of the brand elements is critical. Traditional flexography is spot color printing or fourcolor process printing supported by spot colors that consume a lot of time, effort, and materials. This paper presents results from Ph.D. Thesis by Kai Lankinen of the transition from spot color printing to Expanded Color Gamut printing, ECG, i.e., a multicolor process in solvent-based wide web flexography, which reduces the complexity of the printing process and produces spot color simulations in a simpler, more effective, and more sustainable way.

This study shows an improvement in the OEE of 42% to 85% and a total cost savings of around 0.6 to 1.3 million euros per printing press per year, while the CO2 equivalent is reduced by 34% to 51% compared to spot color printing, the results will be different case by case. The studied tests show the capability to expand the color gamut with additional process colors, up to 91% of the Pantone Color Matching System (PMS) colors for the studied 7-color system of less than 3.0 ΔE2000, as expected. However, against expectations, high-pigmented inks also expands the color gamut by 14% for the studied 4-color inks. The Total Area Coverage (TAC) calculations of the tests show that ECG can save ink.

The original Ph.D. thesis book “Evaluation of Expanded Gamut Printing in Flexography” can be downloaded at: http://urn.fi/URN:ISBN:978-952-03-2027-0