Front End

The ABC of Digital Front Ends for Package Printing

There has been a huge push towards digital printing over the last two years and increased interest in what digital printing has to offer, including short-run printing efficiencies, personalization, prototyping and more. Anyone interested in digital printing for packaging will be interested in our upcoming webinar on “The ABCs of DFEs”.

What’s a DFE? Every digital press is a complicated piece of hardware; the mechanics “under the hood” are scary yet brilliant. Digital press vendors have encapsulated the complexities of their software in a single component called the Digital Front End, or DFE.

Before digital presses, printers talked about RIPs, and workflow, and stepping, trapping, imposition, color mapping, calibration, etc. etc. Mentally, we separate the components or tasks required to make flexo plates. But in the digital world, it’s just the “DFE” – a catchall phrase for all of that software “stuff” that is required to keep the press running. For that matter, everything else up and down stream, as it serves as the focal point for all job information, all the way to shipping methods and addresses.

Think about how archiving physical plates is vastly different to storing jobs in the cloud! How do you know without hesitation which version of a job you printed an hour or a year ago? These are very useful concepts outside of the digital printing world too, but our world is getting much smaller, with merging technologies from other “like” industries offering significant benefits for flexo.

The bonus for management is it’s less complicated. Following a successful digital transition, your operational costs are going to decline overall due to consolidation of data and efficient production. In fact, as a major manufacturer and distribution partner for the flexo industry, our contention is that every business can benefit from a “DFE” – an integrated system that combines all of their business systems and processes to drive their business more efficiently.

You can read about the benefits of Digital Front Ends in an article published in the February issue of Flexo magazine. Better yet, attend our upcoming webinar. There will be something for everyone, whether you’re just considering digital printing, a mid-level digital printer or high-end digital printer.

You can log on to your computer, sit back and absorb the information presented or you can take advantage of the webinar’s interactivity by asking specific questions. Our Integrated Digital Front Ends for Flexo webinar is Wednesday, December 9th at 2:00 P.M. EST. We hope you join us for this unique learning opportunity.