For years, the flexo printing industry has dreamed of a day without limitation. Until now, those limitations had never really been overcome. As an industry in general, flexo printers have done their best with the tools available. So what has been the real limitation? Photopolymer printing plates.
Unlike the metal plate that lithography uses or the engraved cylinders that rotogravure uses, the flexographic industry used a direct printing plate that had some fairly significant mechanical limitations. Those limitations generally boil down to two characteristics: