New proofing system helps diversify label printing

Located in Indiana, USA, Discount Labels is the largest custom pressure-sensitive label manufacturer in the United States. The company was founded in 1965 and is currently one of the business units of Cenveo (). It prints approximately 3,000 individual custom labels per day for nearly 50,000 wholesalers. Customers include agents, fast print shops, and small retail stores. Cenveo is not only the main label printer, but also the fourth largest commercial printing organization and the largest envelope manufacturer in North America.


The new proofing system prints proofs on virtually any package surface including plastic, cardboard, flexible packaging, adhesive labels, and even uneven surfaces.

Discount Labels has a 200,000-square-foot shop with a variety of custom-made precision flexographic machinery that can print a variety of labels: from simple monochrome labels to high-end 11-color labels, multiple repeat foil labels, embossing, and Positive and negative sets of color printing and so on. The company's printed color labels are used in many well-known brands of consumer products, including shampoo, soap, bottled water, juice drinks, and alcohol, as well as a number of its own brands. Its labels also appear in storefronts of the most prestigious high-end retail establishments in the United States and many well-known warehouse retailers.

In the industry, Discount Labels has built its reputation with its high quality label products and impressive product turnover. Most simple short-acting labels can be shipped 24 hours after the order is placed, and the full-color color label is not more than 72 hours from proof-of-proof. Paul Harstrom, Director of Photographics at Discount Labels, points out: “Because of the high turnover rate, we have to rely on very reliable color proofing. When we export documents to specific devices, we and our customers must have the confidence that When a single order is completed, the consistency of finished product labeling and proofing must be as high as 95%. This process saves both parties time and is of reliable quality.”

At the end of June 2004, PD and several other packaging-related commercial media participated in a product demonstration at Latran Technologies' headquarters in Massachusetts. The company demonstrated its unique proofing solution, which was enough to change The company and even the entire industry view on the future development.

Discount Labels purchased the Digital Digital proof printing system from Latran Technologies() in 2003. Prior to this, the company spent three years examining high-end proof printing systems.

Paul Harstrom said that the Prediction system is smoothly integrated into their workflow. “It demonstrated extremely high accuracy and consistency in daily use. We made one adjustment when we added this equipment, and today it has not deviated from our original calibration settings. We have not wasted our work on calibration. One minute."

Paul Harstrom chose the Prediction system for far more than just because of its compatibility with existing equipment. He said that the company also pays attention to the accuracy of color, and hopes that the system can be used flexibly, provide different options and functions, and support the needs of business development.

Paul Harstrom said: "This proofing system should be able to grow with our business in the next ten years. Prediction can do that. It has all the features we need, and as the business grows, we can extend it. Now that we have the Prediction automation system, we can use the manual model of Prediction as our product line expands to other areas, such as shrink packaging."

Latran's digital halftone proofing solution, Prediction System (formerly known as Polaproof), allows operators to apply ink dyes directly to the materials that will be used for printing. The image has a dot size of 10 microns. The sample surface also has a transparent coating of about 4 microns thick, which keeps the dot diffusion at a minimum level, so that the effect of proofing is more reliable and predictable. The Prediction proofing system prints proofs on virtually any package surface, including plastic, cardboard, flexible packaging, adhesive labels, and even rugged surfaces. Andy DiDonato, Latran’s vice president of quality management, said: “As long as the things that can be wrapped around the drum of the Prediction Imager can be used to print proofs.”

Proofing is usually done by placing an extended-range medium (ERM, a plastic sheet coated with a viscous material) on the drum of the imager, and fixing the plastic sheet by vacuum adsorption. The ink-coated paper provided by Latran was placed on the ERM one sheet at a time and the image was printed on it by laser ablation conversion technology. After all the colors are printed, the proofs are sent to a Prediction calender together with the underlying layers to be used for printing. Through warming and heating, the images and adhesives are transferred to the corresponding products.

Andy said that Latran supplies ink sheets for different types of printing presses, while providing dot color and opaque white that cover 90% of the colors in the Panton Color Handbook.

Richard Deroo, director of marketing and strategic alliances at Latran, said that the Prediction system raises the bar for digital half-tone proof printing. "It can imitate the real-time scenes when printing, so that proofs greatly exceed the customer's expectations."

The employees of Discount Labels R&D Department calibrated the company's Predictin system according to the best printing conditions. Of course, this kind of ultra-sharp proofing is not currently used in the flexographic printing industry, but Paul Harstrom said that his team has completed systematic adjustments and provided all the dot diffusion and other printing features that the Printing and Publishing Department has designated as Consistency standard for print jobs. Since all printers use the same ink, stencil, and paper, technicians can determine the average print backplane and set a single calibration curve to correct for all presses.

According to Paul's observation, contract label proofing is still very new in the aniline printing market. “When using an earlier proofing system, proofing is the most concentrated aspect of our customers' complaints. Short turnaround times and the lack of customers’ experience in using mock proofs have become two major challenges. With Prediction, we can provide digital half to our customers. Adjusting the contract proofs is more accurate and consistent. If your customers come to you and request you to help meet the requirements of their own customers, such equipment is necessary."

“At Discount Labels, we use advanced aniline technology and have developed proprietary software and equipment to help smaller agents to compete more effectively and provide high quality offset and gravure labels,” explained Paul Harstrom. : “We use advanced aniline technology to print labels that are far superior to ordinary aniline products. Many in the industry see 3% as the smallest printing point for aniline products, and Discount Labels has the ability to reduce this number to Zero. This index may still not be comparable to gravure printing, but we can all do this and we can do it from time to time."

"When using an earlier proofing system, proofing was the most concentrated aspect of our customers' complaints." Paul Harstrom said that with high-quality aniline printing technology, even our small agent customers receive only 1,000 labels. Orders can also obtain product quality that was previously available only through gravure or offset printing. If gravure printing is used, the minimum number of print batches is usually around 100,000, and the Discount Labels can accept orders of a minimum of 500 lots. The product quality is almost equal to gravure printing, and the delivery speed is unmatched by gravure.

Paul Harstrom said that his customers loved the Prediction system at first sight. “The advantage is that customers don’t have to spend as much time and money as they used to get print proofs and confirm the final printing effect. Now even small agents like moms and wives can walk confidently into the high-end customer’s office, using Digital Predict’s Adjusting the quality and precision of the sample to impress each other. In the label business, it does help us to make a small person look more weight."

Proofing is usually done by placing an extended-range medium (ERM, a plastic sheet coated with a viscous material) on the drum of the imager, and fixing the plastic sheet by vacuum adsorption. The ink-coated paper is placed on the ERM and the image is printed on it by laser ablation conversion technology.


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