On Thursday, February 13, 2020, Bosbt presented the entire flexographic printing process at an open house at the new Bobst Bielefeld Flexo Center of Excellence. This center of excellence located in Bielefeld, Germany, is now entirely dedicated to the flexo process, and more specifically to the extended color gamut (ECG) for wide-web center-drum flexo printers.
ECG is a printing process that uses three additional ink colours, namely orange, green and violet (OGV), in addition to the conventional colours, cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK). This makes it possible to cover more than 90% of the Pantone color chart, compared to about 60% with conventional CMYK according to Bobst.
"Bobst Bielefeld (...) aims to be a central structure for the testing and continuous development of the ECG process for Bobst and suppliers in the sector, in a spirit of open collaboration, explains Mark McInulty, Bobst Bielefeld's General Manager, in a press release. The centre helps our customers working in CI flexo printing to optimise the benefits of implementing the ECG process."
Visitors were able to observe the entire flexo printing process, from file to printed reel, thanks to numerous Bobst partners. They were able to see printing demonstrations on the The Vision CI flexo printing machine launched last October and the Expert CI printer. The quality control of the printed samples was then carried out on the Digital Inspection Table (read Bobst launches digital inspection table for flexible packaging ).
Partner manufacturers include Glunz & Jensen with its Flex-i-Pro 470 plate cutting machine, Rossini who contributed to the ECG project by supplying the Starcoat Light sleeves, the Flint Group whose FlexiPrint solvent-based inks were used for the print demonstration on the Expert CI flexo printer or the manufacturer Follmann who supplied the inks used for the print demonstration on the Vision CI flexo printer.
Bobst also presented its connected services through a live demonstration at the dedicated Bobst Bielefeld Training Center.
