Factors Influencing Flexographic Tone Reproduction Including Types of Printing Plate Materials Used

During the past three years, a number of photopolymer plates for flexographic printing have appeared on the market. The use of such a plate greatly simplifies flexographic plate-making by reducing it to a one-generation process similar in many respects to the preparation of a presensitized plate for offset lithography A series of experiments were conducted to determine whether or not there were significant differences in the areas of halftone dots in different areas of the tonal scale on different types of flexographic plate materials all made from a single negative with a specially designed test object on it. Assuming significant differences were found in the dot areas among the various plates, we further wished to discover whether or not these differences would have a significant effect on the tones printed from these plates or whether differences would be overshadowed by the multitude of other press variables. This paper contains an analysis of the results of these experiments.