Inspect. Save. Repeat. Why You Should Inspect Your Anilox Rolls
Why You Should Inspect Your Anilox Rolls
The quality of your anilox cells is an important factor in the quality of your print, ink usage (or waste) and the press performance. It’s important to inspect your anilox rolls and sleeves for microscopic defects, ink build up and volume loss that could be costing you time and money.Is this your anilox?
Plugged cells are without a doubt causing you to lose volume, but you could probably identify these plugs with a basic microscope. In fact, there’s a good chance you’ll catch this anilox before it makes it to press. But what about when you run into a more challenging situation…How much volume are you losing here?
If you’re using that same basic microscope, there’s really no way to tell. These cells are also plugged with dried ink, but the appearance is more subtle. Can you put this on press? How long will it take you to decide? Likely, after hours of calls to the ink department and wasted test materials, the conclusion will be that the anilox needs further cleaning. But the damage is already done to the bottom line for this job.Enter the 3DQC…
In less than one minute, inspection with the 3DQC determined that the effective volume of this anilox was 1.85 BCM – more than a 25% decrease over the specified volume of 2.6 BCM!So the press operator never had to know the anilox was plugged because this issue was caught with the 3DQC immediately after first cleaning and handled prior to storage. No downtime. No waste. No stress.
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