Description
Zecher in figures
- More than 170 employees
- More than 70 years’ experience in the field of anilox rollers
- Four production plants
- Seventeen laser-engraving units, ten mechanical laser-engraving units
- Production of around 12,000 anilox rollers annually
- Annual turnover in excess of €24 million
Zecher Anilox Rollers
The anilox roller pioneers
Zecher’s activities have always revolved around anilox rollers: After starting out with production of the world’s first routinely engraved anilox roller, Zecher has turned into a top-quality international supplier of innovative anilox-roller solutions. Ever since the company was founded in 1948 by Kurt Zecher, Zecher has been continuously dedicated to improving the performance of the print roller, as evidenced by our more than 65 years’ experience in the production of engraved anilox rollers.
Tailored solutions for your individual needs
If print quality is to be optimised, the anilox rollers used must be matched to your personal requirements – as this is the only way to get the best out of your printing process. Zecher therefore provides a wide range of anilox-roller solutions and additional services, which can be adapted to your needs.
Approach to quality
The teams based at the four production plants of Zecher company headquarters in Paderborn (Germany), which amount to more than 165 employees, manufacture anilox rollers and corresponding sleeves for your print applications. Production takes place exclusively in Germany as part of Zecher's continuous effort to maintain strict in-house quality standards. This translates into reliable and consistent performance for the rollers that are supplied.
Industry solutions
There are good reasons for the anilox roller being the core element of the printing press; not least the direct impact that its performance has on your printing results. Zecher has a deep understanding of the interlinked factors involved, and make constant efforts to ensure that the anilox rollers optimise your printing procedures.
Zecher offers a wide selection of different designs, roller formats, coatings, anilox engraving technologies and much else besides. Zecher's product portfolio is sure to contain the right industry solutions for your specific needs.
Label printing
Regardless of whether your operation involves bottle labels, barcodes or type- and serial-number plates, as a manufacturer of anilox rollers Zecher can supply an optimum solution for every requirement which covers the entire spectrum of printing and finishing options.
Zecher's tough ceramic coating, supplied both to steel cylinders and aluminium sleeves, helps ensure faster job-changes.
The demand for versatile solutions
Label printing can be applied to a wide range of substrates. Zecher's customised anilox rollers and sleeves are designed to cater to this diversity of applications and deliver perfect printing results.
Optimal results with our rollers
Minimal waste requirements and tight colour tolerances place maximum demands on the cell-engraving of anilox rollers. Zecher's anilox solutions let you achieve optimal reproducibility with respect to your fingerprint and printing jobs. Zecher doesn’t force you to make concessions, as homogeneous solid tones and smooth inking performance produce soft, natural gradations. Zecher anilox rollers also open up new horizons for you in terms of HD flexo printing in all colour systems, with particular reference to UV inks.
Flexible packaging
Packaging materials need to be ever-more sophisticated, lighter in weight and lower in cost. The need to strike a balance between economic efficiency, environmental sustainability and constantly changing, new creative ideas is a major challenge for the sector. Zecher anilox rollers allow you to react accordingly, as you tackle your individual printing requirements.
High quality benchmarks
Just as repro departments determine the characteristics of your printing services, Zecher maintains minimum tolerances when it comes to the cell volumes of anilox rollers. This reduces the setup times of your printing machine, while letting you quickly achieve – and then maintain constant – the CMYK colour balance. You can as a result quickly print your designs on a wide range of substrates, including PE, PP, OPP, HDPE, LDPE, MDPE, OPP, PP, PA/PE, COEX, PP-woven, aluminium composite, organic film, etc., regardless of what you are working with halftones of 54 or 60 LPI or more.
Contribution to your goals
Zecher anilox rollers allow you to print packaging-film materials even with water-based coloured inks, thereby fulfilling the current tendency to use environment-friendly packaging materials. The outstanding drainage performance of our anilox rollers lets you transfer the ink perfectly, helping to ensure the stability of both new and repeat print jobs. You can therefore concentrate on your actual main day-to-day task – that of printing!
Offset
Whether you need packaging materials, brochures, catalogues or large-area offset prints – Zecher's anilox solutions deliver a high-quality standard of finish that lets you stand out from the crowd. Zecher ceramic anilox rollers will convince you, with a massive range of applications that runs from homogeneous surfaces up to those that involve multiple coatings. You can also use the anilox rollers with any coating system, all with the permanent benefits of stable adhesion behaviour and high operating performance.
Coating finish
Coating finishes offer countless creative possibilities. Zecher anilox rollers are ideal for use with dispersion, UV or blister coatings. Thanks to their special geometric properties, the ceramic anilox rollers are optimised to meet the requirements of various coatings. Zecher gravure configurations help you achieve homogeneous surfaces of up to 95 gloss units, with anything from high-gloss coatings to extraordinary applications.
Special-effect coatings
A wide range of different finishes lets you add a certain something to your printed matter. Zecher has developed special gravure formats that provide you with various ways of applying special-effect coatings, such as those involving gold and silver, Iriodin or matt-gloss (drip-off) finishes.
Rewettable rubber coating
Rewettable rubber coatings are used for mailshots, application forms, order forms or premier marking systems. Zecher is also able, as a result of a programme of intensive research conducted in cooperation with renowned adhesive manufacturers, to use anilox rollers to apply a rewettable rubber coating on top of your substrate finish.
Coating
Zecher anilox rollers are also suitable for use, in addition to their flexo printing applications, in different coating machines. Whether they involve lacquering, siliconising, adhesives or hot-melt – the possibilities and needs of the coating sector are both diverse and demanding. Zecher's long experience in these fields means that a high level of processing reliability can be offered with excellent results to match.
Silicone
Silicone coatings are becoming increasingly popular in various branches of industry, thanks to their tolerance of high temperatures, resistance to chemicals and high separation efficiency. Zecher's anilox roller solutions for the coating sector allow you to siliconise high-quality films, adhesive tapes and paper.
Hot-melt
Zecher's ceramic hot-melt rollers have a significantly longer service life than steel or chrome cylinders. A system of partial gravure allows laser engraving to be limited to those areas that will subsequently be used for hot-melt purposes, thereby providing your anilox roller solution with good potential for resource savings.
Adhesive application
Adhesives enjoy widespread use in modern packaging technology, as well as playing an absolutely vital role in many other areas of application. Zecher anilox rollers allow you to apply adhesive cleanly in a way that ensures reliable reproduction. The very good drainage performance of the chrome rollers means that they are in great demand for this application.
Melamine-resin coating
Coating with melamine resin is used above all in the furniture and interior-design sectors to create smooth surfaces that are also resistant to fluids and scratching. Zecher anilox solutions let you take full advantage of the properties of this coating material.
PVDC coating
Coatings consisting of polyvinylidene chloride, or PVDC for short, are used use in the area of barrier films. Zecher anilox rollers designed especially for this segment can likewise help you to deliver top-quality performance for your resulting end-products. Their special qualities also allow you to benefit from a longer service life.
Corrugated cardboard
The printing of corrugated cardboard has continued to develop considerably in recent years, in terms of both pre- and post-printing. In addition to traditional print jobs, those involving fine line definitions and increasing quality demands are now the order of the day. Zecher can of course transfer their high standards from other areas of flexo printing, including those that involve large anilox rollers, and apply them to the printing of corrugated cardboard. Zecher's widely renowned, top-quality anilox roller gravure can then be used for anything from steel cylinders to CFRP sleeves.
Tailored to your sector of industry
The printing of corrugated cardboard with water-based inks often requires that pick-up volumes be fully exhausted for line definition purposes. Zecher's cell configurations ensure that your doctor blades run smoothly and efficiently. Let yourself be convinced by brilliant results and long service life performance.
Individual solutions
The challenges facing today’s printing industry can be many and varied. As an anilox roller manufacturer, Zecher supplies individual services that go beyond what is offered as standard, in an effort to meet your needs and area of application.
A comprehensive set of services for your individual application
The following contains a selection of Zecher's individual anilox solutions. We will be pleased to go further into your individual needs.
- Anilox roller inspection
- Evaluation of print samples
- Deep anilox cleaning with Flexowash and ultrasound
- Advice with basic machine configurations
- Assistance with the management of projects
- Design of strip anilox roller tests
- Customised anilox engraving technologies
Zecher anilox rollers customised to meet your needs provide the best possible support for your printing results and processing performance. We are ready to explore new ways of meeting your printing technology-related challenges.
Ceramic anilox rollers
Top-quality material
The “ceramic” functioning layer provides a basis for the laser engraving of Zecher anilox rollers. Zecher uses tried-and-tested chromium oxide ceramics (Cr2O3) for this purpose, given their characteristic melting properties, density and – in particular – their suitability for high-energy laser engraving. Zecher places high demands on material quality in this respect.
Going beyond established standards
Anyone can do “standard”. Zecher goes a step further by providing a corrosion-prevention coating that is also an intermediate substrate. The ceramic polishing process is followed by additional smoothing carried out at a considerably lower speed. Each anilox roller is subjected to further superfine polishing using a diamond-coated abrasive strip. This means that your ceramic roller will have a long and reliable useful life as it delivers outstanding print results.
Conventional rollers
Although the prevalence of anilox sleeves is on the rise, Zecher continues to use a variety of conventional anilox rollers on flexo printing machines. This depends on the design of your particular equipment.
Sleeves
Zecher anilox sleeves enable you to achieve visibly improved processing quality, particularly in the context of short print-runs. Fitted to printing presses designed especially for their use, anilox sleeves can provide you with the decisive advantages that have made them today’s preferred type of roller.
Our anilox roller sleeves, your profitable advantage:
- Improved corrosion prevention
- Long service life
- Optimum handling
- High repeatability (TIR)
- Fast, trouble-free changeover
- Fast reaction to changing colour requirements
- Reduced setup time
Zecher's use of a compressible layer ensures the smooth installation and removal of anilox sleeves on your part. Zecher also provides, in addition to optimised ceramic-layer anchoring, an ideal weight ratio for your anilox roller configuration, based on the use of an aluminium body.
Sleevehandling instructions:
All installation and removal work must be carried out by suitably trained specialists, who should follow the operating instructions (including the safety information) when doing so. Further information can be found in our sleevehanding video:
CFRP rollers
CFRP rollers with diagonal carbon-fibre windings also form part of our range of lightweight anilox rollers. This special type of printing roller offers you the following decisive practical advantages:
- Extremely light weight
- Outstanding rigidity
- Enormous resistance to vibration
These features make our CFRP anilox rollers both extremely resistant to corrosion and highly suitable for high-speed printing applications. Zecher supplies rollers of this type in many common operating widths.
Replacement versus refurbishment
Zecher can give your used anilox rollers a shiny new lease of life. In addition to supplying new print rollers, Zecher can also refurbish your used anilox rollers in-house – regardless of original make. This saves you the cost of buying from new, while allowing you to deliver top-quality printing results once more.
Engraving technologies
The right engraving technology for each area of application – we have the ideal anilox roller engraving to hand.
Zecher Brochure: Engraving Technologies
Hexa 60°
Hexa 60° is Zecher's tried-and-tested standard anilox engraving, designed to deliver top-quality printing results for both the flexo printing and coating sectors.
Diamond 45°
Diamond 45°, one of Zecher's first anilox engraving formats, has now largely been superseded by Hexa 60° technology. Nevertheless, it is recommended for use in certain special areas of application.
Trihelical
Zecher's Trihelical (or cross-hatch) open engraving technology can be used both as a means of extending the standard range of anilox engraving techniques and as a technical alternative. The open structure of its engraved lines provides you with good transfer performance. This engraving technique is particularly recommendable if your work involves large print and coating formats.
HD-ready - full HD
Are you looking for high-resolution print quality? If you are, this anilox engraving technology is probably the right choice for you. Zecher's HD-ready and full-HD engraving techniques both allow you to print in perfect HD quality. The HD anilox engraving techniques are also ESKO-certified.
H.I.T.
Zecher H.I.T. anilox engraving gives you an extra degree of white coverage, while offering new aspects of opaque white, paint coating and special colours. H.I.T. anilox engraving is a classic Hexa 60° engraving technique, characterised by its optimised cell geometry. H.I.T. engraving technique also offers you increased ink-transfer for a lower given quantity. We can particularly recommend this anilox engraving for offset-print coating units and coating machines.
SteppedHex
Zecher's innovative SteppedHex engraving technique, with its unique anilox cell structure, allows you to increase line-count without any loss of volume. You can therefore print with a finer raster, but without having to worry about any significant loss of solid density. You can use this anilox engraving technology with all inking systems.
Customised engraving technology
Zecher's customised engraving technology allows us to supply you with tailored anilox roller configurations matched to your particular needs. Thanks to individually created TIFF files, laser engraved customer-specific designs are available. If your work involves special formats and areas of application, customised anilox technology is the right choice for you.
Reviews
There are no reviews yet.