The Secret Behind Every Happy Printer?

As a press operator, you’re striving every day to run your press at the maximum of its capacity, with minimal downtime, while maintaining consistent and high-quality print results. Having a reliable partner that understands your specific needs, has all the right adhesive products, and can give you technical support on-site is critical.

tesa is the supplier that ticks all these boxes. We have a comprehensive product assortment for the flexographic printing process, developed by our extensive R&D and lab support team of specialists. Over 100 flexo experts are out in the field on any given day, helping you find the best solution to optimize your processes and reach your targets. To make sure your staff is trained and understands our products we have a dedicated global team of application support engineers for technical support on site when needed.

Since the print quality in flexo is improving continuously and is competing with the standards of gravure print quality, the importance of the right plate mounting solution is critical. The right solution and density are crucial in transferring the image to the substrate as accurately as possible.

Furthermore, since brand owners have many changes in their design and want to minimize the time to market, the amount of job changes is increasing. This puts a lot of pressure on the mounting department and the press operators to get the maximum efficiency out of their press with the lowest amount of downtime possible.

Our tesa® Softprint assortment  is available in two thickness categories 500 μm (20 mil) and 380 μm (15 mil). Additionally the assortment provides two product designs, CLASSIC and FLEX, offering individual possibilities for more process efficiency. 

Due to its closed-cell PE foam combined with a PET reinforcement film, tesa® Softprint CLASSIC offers easy handling and is suited for a wide range of specific applications. By comparison, due to its aligned design, which incorporates PE reinforcement layers, the tesa® Softprint FLEX range is ideal for critical sleeve applications, including thin-walled sleeves and scratched sleeve surfaces.

All tesa® Softprint foams facilitate excellent print quality, supported by a smart tape production process – leaving all foam cells intact for better cushioning and resilience over time. All raw materials used in production are carefully selected by a team of dedicated chemical engineers and flexo market experts to ensure the highest quality standards.

Depending on your individual needs and conditions, the perfect combination of adhesives on both tape sides (sleeve and plate side) can be selected. Sleeve types, plate models, climate conditions, ink types, and process requirements all play a significant role in choosing the right plate mounting tape.

The assortment is available in 6 different hardness levels ranging from extra soft to extra hard and two different thickness levels for more choices to maximize print quality for halftone, process, and solids. 

The difference in adhesion levels provides the benefits that you are looking for, easy mounting and demounting, prevention of bouncing or plate lift. Our tapes can do it all!

The unique concept of tesa® Twinlock is to provide sustainable and reusable plate mounting solutions for cost-efficient and consistently high-quality print jobs. The basis for this technology begins with the selection of a base sleeve or cylinder from the customer's preferred supplier. We then add a polyurethane (PU) foam layer to the top of the base sleeve. The PU foam is coated with a unique polymer that has the characteristics to remain permanently tacky. When proper cleaning and handling procedures are observed, the tesa® Twinlock sleeves can be used for a very long period.

tesa® Twinlock technology offers four product varieties with three different hardness levels. Our soft, medium, and hard foam structures allow complete flexibility for the customer. The different thickness layers of the tesa® Twinlock coating enable us to deliver the most accurate sleeve based on your existing production needs.

Benefits of tesa® Twinlock

Our adhesive plate-mounting sleeves provide exceptional print quality. Even after long press times, the sleeves produce accurate and reliable results. The consistent print quality is attributed to our open-cell foam structure. Through this foam structure, our sleeves absorb bouncing effects to improve print quality. A second critical factor that influences print quality is our strict diameter tolerances. We use laser technology to measure our sleeves and ensure they meet your exact requirements. With our carefully crafted tesa® Twinlock we enable:

• High printing speeds
• Lasting print quality without the need for adjustments
• Excellent registration
   

The main advantage of this technology is the reusability of the self-adhesive sleeve. When best practices are observed, our reusable sleeves have the potential to be used for a very long period of time. In most cases, our tesa® Twinlock sleeves only need to be recoated when physical damage occurs to the base sleeve or coating.

Flexo printers benefit from:

• Lower running cost
• Carbon footprint reduction
• Fast ROI when reusing the same repeats
• A more precise estimate of input production costs

As a full system provider, we offer a market approach that considers all factors of the printing process. Based on your individual needs, we provide the best product solution for your process. In fact, this is the secret behind every happy printer.

Besides plate-mounting solutions and splicing tapes, we also have a wide range of complementary solutions based on pressure-sensitive adhesive technology speed up changeovers, prevent machine stops, and facilitate everyday tasks.

Roller wrapping, plate-edge sealing, UV measuring, plate cleaning, or failure flagging tapes facilitate efficient and reliable printing processes and are just a few examples of the well-conceived solutions tesa has to offer.

For more information, please get in contact with your local sales representative or visit us at www.tesa.com/paper-print