Fleksograf studio prepress retrofits Miraclon’s Shine LED Lamp Kits

Polish flexo pre-press specialist, a beta site for Miraclon’s Shine LED Lamp Kit, has been so satisfied with its experience that it promptly installed a second kit at a second production facility.

Founded in 2001 by a father and son team Krzysztof and Adam Malengowski, Fleksograf studio prepress operates across two sites producing flexo plates for European wide-web packaging customers, mostly in the food and hygiene products markets.

After becoming one of the first Polish adopters of Flexcel NX technology in 2010, the company added a second system with Flexcel NX Ultra Processor in 2018, following Krzysztof’s strategy of ‘innovative thinking, hard work and an uncompromising focus on quality’.

By utilizing the existing fluorescent exposure frames, the Shine LED Lamp Kit is a simple and cost-effective route to the advantages of LED, retrofitted in the field in a few hours at Fleksograf studio prepress.

It offered the Polish pre-press specialist several he benefits, including consistent, predictable intensity over a much longer operating life (up to 5,000 hours compared to 800 hours for fluorescent tubes), exposure times faster by at least 20 percent, and enhanced sustainability due to reduced waste and less power consumed. On press, the increased plate consistency leads to more efficient printing.

‘It’s a very good solution for flexo platemakers looking to increase production efficiency by switching to LED exposure from fluorescent technology at a very competitive cost,’ said Adam Malengowski, pre-press manager at Fleksograf studio prepress. ‘Providing customers with consistent quality plates is one reason for investing in the Shine LED Lamp Kit. LED avoids one of the main issues with fluorescent tubes - the way they degrade over time, and at different rates.

‘This means operators can spend a lot of time on process control, checking and recalibrating the tubes. In contrast, with the Shine LED Lamps they can just “set and forget”, because they’re confident exposures will be consistent over hours of production, from lamp to lamp and within each lamp. Because the LED lamps warm up and cool down instantaneously, exposures are significantly faster - about 12 minutes for the main exposure compared to an average of around 22 minutes with fluorescent tubes. So, productivity has been given a real boost.’

The extensive use of the Flexcel NX Ultra solvent- and VOC-free plate processing is testimony to Fleksograf studio prepress’s commitment to more sustainable plate production, another reason for the switch to LED.

‘Energy consumption is lower with the Shine LED Lamp Kit, we don’t have the issue and expense of disposing of fluorescent tubes at the end of their much shorter life, and more consistent exposures eliminate defective plates. It all adds up to a more sustainable proposition for us and our customers,’ concluded Adam Malengowski.