FINALLY….A Flexographically Printed PANTONE® Color Guide!!!

The Flexographic Trade School has been blazing new trails in press operator training and technology development for the last two years, so it's only fitting that it produce the first ever flexographic PANTONE Color Guide called "FTS Flexographic Color Application Guide in Popular PANTONE Colors”.

The Flexographic Trade School (FTS), in Charlotte, NC, under license with Pantone, Inc. and teaming with eight vendor sponsors of the school, including Trinity Graphics, Raflatac, Harper Corporation of America, Mark Andy/Comco, Lohmann, Environmental Inks and Coatings, Akzo Nobel, and American Die Technology, has printed the first ever Flexographic Color Guide in PANTONE colors.

This application Guide, called the "FTS Flexographic Application Guide in Popular PANTONE Colors", was created to assist in matching popular PANTONE Colors used in flexographic printing. It provides designers and printers with a tool to show how a color will appear with high gloss UV varnish versus a water-based overprint varnish (OPV), on coated and matte coated pressure sensitive label paper.

"This guide," states Art Fields, program director for the school, "is an excellent tool for color communication in any flexographic pressroom. For the first time, flexo production personnel will have a matching tool not only printed with flexographic inks and pigments, but showing exactly what was used to achieve the color. This guide is unique in that the color pages have a matching color swatch printed on high gloss and mattes substrates, and half the swatch has a UV varnish and the other half has a non-gloss Over Print Varnish (OPV). Added to this is the printing of a readable bar code, open and reverse lines, type from 2-8 point, and screen patched from 5 to 100% dots, in line screens ranging from 133 - 200, resulting in a color match book built for flexo, as well as a tool that offers 'application guidance' to achieve the color."

Fields concludes, "Seeing this guide come together is a pressman's dream - a color guide made for flexo, from flexo inks, with flexo tooling, printed on a flexo press!"

As a color communication tool, the guide contains 48 popular flexographic packaging colors printed on two different Raflatac, Inc. pressure sensitive substrates, a 60# gloss and 60# matte coated. The PANTONE Colors used for this guide were selected based on ink companies' popular usage and Pantone's experience. For this guide, there are 11 base colors, 21 centerline colors and 16 blends, including browns and grays. Centerline colors are colors made from base colors that do not contain additions of transparent white or black. The inks used in printing colors in this guide were manufactured to simulate the coated portion of the PANTONE formula guide printer edition and matched under 5000 K lighting. The same inks and printing conditions were used as a follow-through in printing the matte coated portion of this guide.

The "FTS Flexographic Application Guide in Popular PANTONE Colors" was printed with a 'single plate' used for each color in order to provide users with the "application" effects shown on each page of this guide. In order to achieve the desired results, technologies listed as follows were used: Trinity Graphics' .067 photopolymer plates; Raflatac's KromekoteÒ Extragloss RP54 White Kraft and 60# Matte Laser RP54 White Kraft; Harper Corporation of America's Platinum™ anilox rolls with a volume of 1.3 or 1.8 BCMs, in 800 or 1000 lines per inch; Mark Andy/Comco's 2200 - 10" 8-Color; Lohmann Sticky Back DuploFLEX 4.4 mounting tape; Environmental Inks' Pro Plus water-based inks, UV overprint vanish, and water-based OPV; Akzo Nobel's Hydrokett 3000 water-based inks; and America Die Technology's new hot foil stamping unit, hot foil stamping dies, and cutting dies for the guide pages. FTS's Program Director, Art Fields, and Chief Instructor, Scott Gilliam, printed the Guide in the school's Research and Training Center.

The FTS Flexographic Application Guide in Popular PANTONE Colors has a retail value of $30.00 and can be purchased directly from the school or any of the supporting sponsor companies.

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