As the label industry continues to innovate, Apex International is aiming to reinvent the anilox to solve UV ink spitting. UV LED technology is promising to bring many advantages to flexo printers. The UV LED lamps provide stable UV output at low energy consumption, generating low heat emissions, thus allowing for instant curing even on heat-sensitive and thin substrates.

At the same time, UV inks are known to cause problems such as ink spitting, due to their higher viscosity. By reinventing the very concept of anilox ink-to-plate transfer, Apex is providing a solution to prevent this problem from occurring. Apex uses a constant beam laser to create its patented GTT Open Slalom Ink Channel anilox geometry that lets the ink flow uniformly and calmly onto the plate. This not only prevents pin-holing, mottling, haloing or dot gain to occur in print, but also makes GTT a guaranteed anilox solution against ink spitting.

The Internet of Things is triggering the next industrial revolution by connecting machines, software and systems. And Apex is making sure to explore the opportunities this trend of automation and data exchange could provide to flexo printers. By developing "Smart Aniloxes," the company's rolls will be able to automatically share status information with intelligent systems.

That will allow operators to have better control over cleaning cycles and more control over when to perform maintenance. Smart Aniloxes will thus enable further improvement of process control, uptime and productivity.