An Industrial Revolution

Scott Adams, Bob Osborne and Mark Osborne look on as Rob McCauley demonstrates the Durst Tau 330.

The mark of a trusty power tool is its durability and longevity. As a drill takes a beating over years of use, it needs to stay functional, ready for action when called upon. But as wear and tear accumulates, a tool’s label comes under fire as well. And the mark of a good industrial label is how it holds up over time and with heavy usage.

At Southern Coating & Nameplate in North Little Rock, Arkansas, the goal is not just to create a visually striking label. These labels need to withstand impact, outdoor elements and the test of time once they’re placed on a tool, air conditioner or electrical appliance. And because industrial labeling is not a one-size-fits-all field, the company relies on the full arsenal of printing and finishing technology it has at its fingertips.

Southern Coating & Nameplate uses doming to enhance many of the labels it produces.

Foundations Formed in Metal

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Arkansas native Bob Osborne began to sense a need. He had spent 10 years as one of the first 100 salespeople for Avery Dennison, selling labels and other product identification materials.

But the people he was selling to were located in places such as New York, Massachusetts and California. At the time, Osborne explains, businesses were moving to the Sun Belt states and they were in need of labels too. He founded Southern Coating & Nameplate in 1970 — which was then incorporated in 1972 — and set out to serve these local companies.

“It was just a business that was founded out of necessity,” he explains.

At first, the company specialized in metal nameplates, focusing heavily on the air conditioner market. While Southern Coating & Nameplate still does plenty of metal work, it didn’t take long before it started incorporating label printing into its repertoire.

Osborne explains that during the early days of the business, a friend and business associate from Carrier air conditioning called him up, stating that Carrier was planning on transitioning its labels to mylar. Though he didn’t work with that material at the time, Osborne says that this was the first time that he realized the label world was changing — and his company would need to change with it.

“I knew then that I had to make the adjustment to add that capability to our company,” he says.

A Technology Leader

Southern Coating & Nameplate began to add printing capabilities with a silkscreen press, eventually installing a five-color UV Hercules unit from American M&M. Mark Osborne, Bob Osborne’s son and the company’s president, explains that silkscreen was, and still is, an excellent option for industrial label printing due to the durability of its inks.

A run of silkscreen-printed labels in process on a five-color, circular UV silkscreen press from American M&M.

However, as time went on, Southern Coating & Nameplate discovered the need to take another technological leap. It acquired an account with Skil, a major player in the power tools market, and was tasked with producing labels for its tools and other electrical appliances. Mark Osborne explains that this need for increased product led the company to enter the flexographic market. The company now runs three flexo presses, including two seven-color Webtron 750 presses and a five-color, 10˝ Aquaflex unit.

With flexo printing on board, Southern Coating & Nameplate now had an ability to pump out high quality labels at a high volume. But when Mark Osborne entered the business in the late 1990s, he began to notice some emerging needs in the marketplace.

One was an increase in customers requesting print samples. Instead of trying to set up a job on the silkscreen press just to produce a sample, he explains that the company first entered the digital market in 1998 with two Gerber Edge printers and a plotter. Though the company now had the ability to quickly generate samples, Mark Osborne explains that he sensed an increased need for digital as requests for short run jobs began to build up.

To avoid the cost and waste that comes from running short runs via silkscreen or flexographically, Osborne says that in 2004, he brought in a 54˝ Roland Eco-Sol press to more efficiently handle these requests.

“If somebody wanted 2,000 or 3,000 [labels], we could just do that,” he says. “We wouldn’t have to set up a flexo press and we wouldn’t have to silkscreen them.”

As Southern Coating & Nameplate began to see the immediate benefits of digital label printing, Mark Osborne explains the company had a desire to continue to improve its speed and delivery capabilities. It has since added a second 54˝ Roland unit and in 2010 brought a 4x8’ Fujifilm Acuity Advance HS flatbed press on board.

During the past few years, though, Mark Osborne explains he was on the hunt for a new digital press. But before a deal could be made, there were specific needs that had to be addressed.

“I had a checklist of things that I wanted,” he says. “I wanted speed, I wanted outdoor durability and I wanted the width.”

In November, the company announced it would be bringing a new Durst Tau 330 digital press to North Little Rock, continuing the 45-year-old industrial label company’s quest to stay on the cutting edge of printing technology.

Though the company specializes in industrial labels, Southern Coating & Nameplate also prints food labels.

Beauty and Strength

While the visual attractiveness of a label is essential in all markets, strength, durability and ruggedness are all key elements of a quality industrial label. One of the challenges that Southern Coating & Nameplate welcomes on this front is customizing durability elements for each customer, due to the different needs of each label. With its labels being placed on tools, power equipment, air conditioners, exercise machines and beyond, the labels that come out of Southern Coating & Nameplate’s facility will end up in highly varying environments.

Mark Osborne explains the best place to start when constructing a custom industrial label is with the adhesive. For example, Osborne states that a label intended to stick to a powder-coated paint won’t use the same adhesive as a label that needs to stick to plastic.

But it’s not just what’s on the back of the label that creates durability. Southern Coating & Nameplate frequently works with overlaminates that cover its labels, protecting them from anything that could cause damage head on. Power tool labels, for example, take a lot of abuse over the years and these overlaminates protect the printing beneath it.

“You have to have a clear overlaminate on it so if it gets dropped on the floor it doesn’t scratch your name off it,” Mark Osborne says. “You want it to last. With food, you’re thinking it’s going to be on the shelf for six months. With our product, we want it to last for years and years and years.”

Though durability and ruggedness are at the forefront of Southern Coating & Nameplate’s production, Bob Osborne explains that these qualities do not come at the expense of a label’s attractiveness. For example, in addition to high quality print options, the company has also invested heavily in finishing technologies like doming, embossing and debossing, all to enhance visual impact.

“We certainly have a lot of customers that require both,” Bob Osborne says. “They want it to be highly decorative. Maybe they want it to be domed so it’s the most decorative part of their product. But they want it to last. We try to attack all of those different requirements, and we’ve been very successful at doing that.”

Digital for the Present and Future

When Durst first announced the availability of its Tau 330 digital label press in 2012, Mark Osborne explains that it immediately grabbed his attention. Specifically, he says, its in-line Spartanics laser diecutting system, lamination capabilities and 150 ft./min. print speeds were among the most alluring features.

Scott Adams and Mark Osborne inspect a print run off of a Fujifilm Acuity flatbed digital press.

Much like its prior digital equipment, Southern Coating & Nameplate brought the Durst press on board to add some relief to the flexo and silkscreen departments by transitioning the jobs that made more sense for digital.

“If someone calls and says, ‘I know I used to order 100,000 of these, but now I only need 20,000,’ the Durst will really help us to run those labels,” Mark Osborne says. “We can do everything we did with the flexo press in a lot shorter amount of time.”

Though the new digital press will certainly be able to take some work off of the flexo machines, Bob Osborne explains it won’t be a complete replacement. He says that for large orders that need to be run at a high speed, flexo will still be the better option.

However, the Tau 330 will factor in when a customer realizes he or she needs to tack on a few more labels to a long run.

“If we are going to have to run a million labels and run that flexo press at 500 ft./min., the Tau cannot do that,” Bob Osborne says. “However, if that customer comes back and says, ‘Whoa I’m 5,000 short,’ setting that up on the flexo press is not an economical way to supply that customer’s product.”

Though the digital printing of the Tau 330 is well-suited for short-run work, Scott Adams, vice president of Southern Coating & Nameplate, says it is capable of handling some high volume jobs.

“With industries changing and purchasing habits evolving, we felt we needed a machine that would allow us to run both very high volumes at high speeds, and to accommodate customers who only need 5,000 or 10,000 pieces — all in a flexible digital format that keeps us fast and competitive,” he says.

From an economical perspective, Southern Coating & Nameplate also expects to see substantial cost savings from the laser diecutting capabilities the press brings on board. Mark Osborne explains that as artwork changes on the digital press, the laser can automatically reconfigure along with it.

With an average die cost of about $300 for a flexo job, Osborne explains that a job on the Durst press that uses the Spartanics laser diecutting system will result in one less charge on the customer’s end.

This seven-color Webtron 750 flexo press is one of three flexo presses in operation at Southern Coating & Nameplate. The company prints labels using flexo, silkscreen and digital printing technology.

“It’s not [a situation] where you have to stop the press and you have to go set it up on a different machine,” he says. “It all runs together. If you line up nine jobs and you print nine different shapes, it communicates with the finishing system.”

Though the press was only installed on Nov. 16, 2015, Southern Coating & Nameplate has already laid out a plan of action for the new equipment. First, Mark Osborne explains he wants to move all possible in-house jobs to the digital press. Then, he says, the company can feasibly start expanding the markets it serves — growing beyond industrial labeling.

“If we can call on it and get the business, it doesn’t matter what market it is,” he says. “We can go into anything we want. It opens the door, whether it’s food, medical or trailer manufacturers. Everything has a label on it and this press will run anything that we need it to.”

As digital technology continues to develop, Mark Osborne says he is excited to see the graphical developments in the world of labeling. Complex artwork is no longer a restriction, he says, and labels are going to begin to reflect that.

“Beauty labels are going to get a lot more beautiful in the future,” he says. “It’s limitless on a bottle of wine or a bottle of perfume — it doesn’t matter. If you can design the artwork, we can print it. The possibilities are endless.”