Flexo Printing Plates

Photopolymer Flexographic printing plates are used to print your custom flexible packaging. They are made from your art, are owned by you and stored under special conditions at Custom Poly Packaging to be used in the manufacture of your custom flexible polyethylene packaging. Plate life expectancy is about 3 years or 500,000 impressions, but this is only an estimation. 

Registered flexographic printing means that the image printed on your bag will always appear in the same position from one item to the next. When we register your graphic image, we can avoid the partial images that occur with random printing.

Random flexographic printing can be slightly less expensive than registered print, but the image(s) will appear multiple times on each bag and will change position in a vertical or horizontal direction depending on whether the bag is bottom seal or side weld. There will be many bags with a partial image at the edges of the bag since the bags will be cut and sealed without regard to the position of the image(s).

Mid-run plate or slug (small plate) changes are available. It is more economical to run a single bag type, size, thickness & feature(s) that is printed with multiple similar print images by changing the plate(s) or slug(s) within the total quantity of the order for that item. For example, an order for 100,000 bags [all the same type, size, thickness, feature(s)] may be composed of 10 jobs of 10,000, each with a different UPC, flavor or other change in the graphic image. Sometimes when a plate changes, an ink color will also change. There are some specific guidelines you'll need to know when designing your graphics to take advantage of combination (combo) runs of a bag. Please call us to discuss your project. This will save you time and money when the graphics are created.

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