Bye Bye Anilox ...
Revolutionary Roll Surface for Natural Ink Management

The variety in anilox rolls is enormous and still growing. Rulings are getting finer and many rulings are available in a number of ink volumes. Every roll has its advantages for certain applications, but the margins for better printing are getting smaller. Moreover, finer screen rulings have their own limitations, such as poorer cleaning properties. A good flexo printer chooses his anilox rolls carefully, often selecting a different one for each job and each color. However, the wide choice in anilox rolls is confusing and is not beneficial to the urgently needed standardization of the flexo printing process.

The development of the traditional anilox roll has virtually exhausted its potential for optimization, observes Martien Hendriks, Technical Sales Director of Apex. We felt that a new concept was needed. After several years of extensive research and development we are now ready to offer a completely new type of roll to the market.  We no longer call it an anilox roll, but a metering roll, because the roll is manufactured by means of the Genetic Transfer Technology and one of its characteristics is that the roll has no cells.

The metering roll has a layer made of a mixture of chromium and titanium oxide with a number of fixed particle sizes. The surface profile has an open structure, which means that there are no screen rulings, cell depths or opening ratios to specify the roll. To engrave the new surface structure, Apex developed a special low energy laser.

What makes the metering roll so special is its ability to give each element of the printing plate the amount of ink that is needed for high-quality printing. Solids, which require more ink, are heavily inked, while less ink is transferred to fine lines and halftones. It is no longer necessary to use separate plates and anilox rolls for the printing of solids and halftones. Moreover, the printing range of the metering roll is wider than the range of a conventional anilox roll. With the same roll, halftones of 110 lpi and 150 lpi can be printed.

Just four Apex rolls (XL, L, M, & S) cover all engravings!  One multi-purpose engraving can take the place of several anilox rolls.  A smaller anilox/metering roll inventory means less time spent choosing the right one and less money sitting on your shelf.

Stressed inks
What is the secret of this characteristic? Martien Hendriks explains: The wiping of an anilox roll with the doctor blade makes the ink move or stir in the cells. I call this stressing the ink. With the open and smooth structure of our new metering rolls, the ink film remains stationary after wiping and does not really move. The ink is stressless. As the solids are usually a bit higher on the plate, the pressure of the ink film on the roll is higher and so more ink is transferred to the solid. Other more open printing elements take less ink. We have been inspired by the water management of the traditional Dutch flat lands. Here the water flows and is kept by an ingenious system of ditches and canals. The structure of our metering roll is comparable with that system. The metering roll is rather shallow, there are no deep cells. Therefore, the roll is less apt to retain dried ink remnants as happens in the cells of a conventional  anilox roll. Also the cleaning of the roll is much easier. The lifetime of the roll is probably longer than that of a conventional anilox roll, although long-term practice has to prove this. It has already been proven that the doctor blades last longer.

For more information on Apex GTT Rolls, contact Frank Burgos:
Toll-Free (US & Canada): 1-866-416-1484
Outside US & Canada: 1-336-812-3784
Email: frankb@flexoexchange.com

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