CAMBRIDGE, UNITED KINGDOM - Hamillroad Software, a leading RIP and screening innovator, announced today that the company’s new Bellissima Digitally Modulated Screening for Flexo (now in final pre-release production) has ‘knocked spots’ off the competition at the 2015 South Africa Flexographic Print Excellence Awards by winning the Gold Award in the flexible packaging narrow web category.
 
Robert Miller, Hamillroad’s Flexo Expert who headed up the development testing at Syreline said, “Following the previous awards which we won in 2013, we have been hard at work to ready Bellissima for release. This readiness has involved a number of tweaks and adjustments to perfect the screening, but also extensive testing of different CtP devices, plates, anilox rollers, presses, substrates and inks, etc… so that we fully understand the system requirements. Now it performs ideally in multiple workflow environments. All that has taken a lot of effort, but as we go into final pre-release production prior to release in 2016, we are delighted to win the top award in the category in which it was entered.”
 
Robert went on to say, “Again this confirms our sincerely held belief that the quality-of-print from our Bellissima Digitally Modulated Screening far exceeds everything else, and that this technology is going to fundamentally change the face of printing in the flexo industry. As previously experienced, we continue to obtain exceptional results which give a jump in quality that has astounded everyone who has seen it, with flat tints so smooth that spot colours can be run as CMYK, combined with easier on-press handling and faster make-ready.”
 
Syreline Process Comments
 
Commenting on their achievement in winning the award, Gavin Jones, Technical Director at Syreline said, “I have been in the industry for over 49 years, 40 of those as a director of Syreline Process, and personally I have never seen anything like this screening.” Gavin went on to say, “In my opinion, it addresses all of the problems in flexo that conventional and FM screening has been unable to solve. As we continue with it in full production, we can only see what I feel is already revolutionary, getting even better.”
 
Gold in the Flexible Packaging Narrow Web (Process) Category
 
Aluminium Foil Convertors entered a single Bellissima job in the flexible packaging narrow web (process) section. The job titled “Faircape Dairy / Woolworths Ayrshire Double Cream Flavoured Yoghurt” depicts pots with images of various fruits and very small reverse text on a background vignette. This image was chosen for the Gold Award. The soft vignettes came in for particular praise by the judges on the FTASA panel, who also noted that the reversed-out type (less than 6pt) was excellent and the solid was faultless.
 
About Digitally Modulated Screening
 
The company’s Digitally Modulated Screening technology, currently being sold for litho offset printing as Auraia Screening, is a revolutionary and disruptive innovation that enables high-end violet and thermal CtP devices to produce images that emulate the quality of a traditional 400-600 lpi screen for commercial printers and 200-300 lpi screen for newspaper printers. It ensures production of rosette-free, moiré-free and noise-free flat tints that equal or better the smoothness of conventional screening. In fact several tests have proved that Auraia produces noticeably smoother flat tints than high-lpi conventional AM/XM screens.
 
More importantly for many printers, the Digitally Modulated Screening technology does all this whilst using less ink; every single printer that has measured the reduction on a wide range of typical jobs has reported a level of ink saving (on top of any with GCR) of between 12-24%. This has meant that the typical ROI for a printer purchasing Auraia has been around 12 months, with some printers confirming a ROI of as little as 6 months.