Are the doctor blades currently being used in your presses the right blades?
I would agree that’s a very broad question. Clarifying further, do the blades fit your process? Your life expectancy? Your pricing strategy? Your safety concerns? From the most cost effective to higher priced, short life to long life and the safest. All of them can have their place.
Process
If you have short run business and policies that don’t allow you to clean your blades or chambers with blades in them, then of course we look to an economical blade that can do the job and not cause damage to the anilox roll. From the other side of the spectrum, longer running jobs, presses that run ECG, colors that frequently stay in the press (whites), you then need to look to longer life blades to keep your presses running.
Longevity
Based on your process, you can maximize the life of your blade. There are many things to consider. Ink type, average run length, anilox configuration, types of steel blades, coated steels, nano technologies, blade tip configurations. This can be confusing since this is usually not a one blade fits all scenario.
Pricing
Typically, the longer the life the higher the price. Steel quality, coatings on the steel also affect pricing. But, optimizing by the variables listed above, you may not need to always pay the premium to get results. The key is to optimize based on your variables and complete testing, documenting the procedure and results.
The price of the doctor blade is often a major factor in decision making. When in reality it should be the cost of lost production time. I’ve seen wide web production times valued between $500-$2,000 per hour. Do the math between a cheap blade that lasts one shift versus a higher priced blade that lasts 4 days. Figure in the number of blades used, how many hours per day to replace blades multiplied by how many more days the higher priced blade may run. Take the total number of extra hours to replace cheaper blades and multiply by the value of your production time per hour. This is usually a big number that surprises many production personnel. Imagine gaining 5 or 10 more hours per week in production time (in many cases it’s more). Let’s look at it this way. Since printers, in a sense, get paid for putting ink on paper, the more ink, they put on more paper, the better their profits. Makes sense, right?
Safety
You may have procedures in place to safely install, clean and dispose of steel blades. In that case, your set to start optimizing by the variables you have. Your company policy may prohibit the use of steel all together. If this is the case, rest easy, there are synthetic options available. And no, they are not all created equal. In many cases, through testing we found that the longevity of a quality synthetic blade is better than steel, even with high quality, high line screen printing. This scenario can be a win, win since you can possibly get longevity, safety and an economical price, all with little to no potential for damage to your anilox inventory.
Taking all this into consideration, ask yourself the question…are we running the right doctor blades?
All Printing Resources has formed our Technical Solutions Group (TSG) to encompass our full range of expertise in all critical areas of the flexo process. This team is made up of industry professionals dedicated to being up-to-date on new technologies along with best practices. They are armed with the latest in diagnostic tools, and are experienced in problem-solving that can achieve sustainable results.
If you would like to learn more about this subject, please feel free to reach out to us by calling 1-800-445-4017, or by e-mail at:
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