Dick Chesnut

President Obama signed into law a $787 billion stimulus bill on Feb. 17, 2009. Formally called the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act), this bill has enough money to provide $2,570 for every man, woman, and child in the U.S. (Do the math and you’ll find it’s based on a population of about 306 million.)

The gravure industry spent years just watching flexo improve and promote itself as the printing process of choice. Now, gravure printers and suppliers are preparing to market their process back into the spotlight. GRAVURE'S GOT IT all: unsurpassed quality, affordability, and a committed and passionate industry. So, why is it such an unsung process? There are several theories, but flexo leads the list of culprits. For the past few decades, flexo has successfully worked to upgrade its quality and reliability, and the industry hasn't kept its advances secret. Flexo suppliers dominate the advertising in trade magazines, some of which focus solely on

Will combination presses boldly go where relatively few have gone before? by Jessica Millward, Associate Editor THOUGH COMBINATION PROCESS is now and will continue to be a strong contender in the package print market, that strength, at present, is concentrated in narrow-web applications, and configurations most commonly involving flexo/screen pairings. While machines outside this perimeter have been built, they are relatively rare. Here, suppliers summarize combo print possibilities for not-so-fully explored worlds. New World: Wider webs/CI formats Today's platform combo presses afford printers a considerable luxury: choice. The combo press's ability to print using different methods, in whatever order necessary, means the printer can

Developments in presses and ancillary equipment have made gravure's consistency and vibrancy viable for short runs. by Jessica Millward, Associate Editor Call it the "me" generation of packaging. Individualized, shorter runs are on the it-list of customers across the gamut of package printing processes. Fifteen years ago, this wasn't particularly good news for gravure, the king of long-runs. The larger set-up costs and longer pre-production time involved in printing with cylinders rendered "short-run gravure" a near-oxymoron. The evolution of quicker-change presses and innovative ways of engraving, however, has introduced gravure into the shorter-run arena. And with set-up costs on a steady decline,