Custom Flexo Fountain Liners
Custom flexo fountain liners are a cost-effective solution for flexographic printers who want to save time and money. These ink liners shorten the time it takes to clean up ink stations giving you more run time. Explore in detail everything you’d ever want to know about custom liners for flexo presses
Sometimes, yes. But equipment manufacturers don’t always take into consideration that a customer may want to use a fountain liner and therefore the steel pans aren’t always conducive to using them. Rounded edges and fountains with two levels present issues to keeping the fountain watertight. Square boxes don’t nest well into a fountain with a rounded bottom and tend to buckle on the edges when filled with ink. In addition, the diameter of your drain may come into play as well. Often times, DIPCO will re-engineer you a new steel pan making your press more liner-friendly. Our design team will be happy to advise you with the best way to build to system that meets your needs and expectations.
DIPCO fountain liners can come with a ¾” or 1 ¼”plastic molded drain in them. Sometimes, that drain and hose can be fed down the drain in your existing pan and sometimes it can’t. Removing the liner and drain hose from the OEM pan after ink has gone down it can also cause a big mess. With DIPCO Stainless steel pans, there is a large cutout where the drain would be making the removal of the liner a snap!
Our steel pans start as low as $63 each and go up from there according to the size & complexity of the pan. We’re not in the business of selling steel pans, but it’s necessary to do so we can provide you with liners that work perfectly.
We do this often, but sometimes it’s not always possible. Our design team can advise you on whether this is an option for you. Sometimes, we can put a metal support inside the pan as well, so you can interchange low volume liners and deep liners from job to job.
The set fee will vary from project to project depending on whether DIPCO needs to engineer a retainer. Fountain liner/retainer combos require a $600 set up fee that includes the prototype retainer, the engineering time, a die for your liner and the shipping costs. If we are able to design a liner to fit your manufacturer’s steel pan, the setup fee is only $300. If your press has a passive roller system in it where the roller mounts inside the pan, the setup fee can be more than $600 as we may need to design bearing holders to snap on to your retainer to support the roller. Our design team can help you through that process if this is the case.
Ink fountain systems require a 250 piece order to put the project into production with an understanding that you use at least 500 liners per year. You don’t have to place an order for the 250 pieces until you have approved the design.
The first step is to send some pictures to our design team. We’ll need pictures of the fountain out of the press so we can see the inside, the drain and the bottom of the fountain. Our design team will be able to tell from the pictures if we need to build a retainer for you. We’ll also want to learn about your applications. If you’re pumping ink through the fountain, it will affect the design. We’ll also want some close-up photos of the fountain in the press to make sure that we have the needed space to make our design.
The project starts when the setup fee is paid or a PO is issued for the fee. We will usually require you to send us one of your steel pans, so we can take measurements of it and begin the design. Typically, the steel pan is shipped back to you within a few days. If you have a drawing of the fountain done by an engineer, we can use that instead of the pan itself in most cases. Press manufacturers often do not give these drawings out, but we have a few that we work with closely that are happy to help.
That depends on how prototyping goes. The steel pans are made by one of our vendors and special pans typically take 3-4 weeks to have made. While that’s being done, we are working on the rest of the project, so that the liners are ready to ship when the steel pans arrive at our plant. At that point, we ship the prototype steel pan, 4 liners, enough hoses and everything you need to test the system 4 times on a single station. If you’re completely happy with the design, then send us a PO for 250 liners and however many steel pans you’ll need and we can have the system in production in about 3-4 more weeks. If we build you a liner to fit your OEM pans, the time can be less. If you want changes to the steel pan or liners while testing the prototypes it can drag the process out.
Reach out to Miles at mjohnson@dipworldwide.com or 321.454.4543. Miles will gather the information we need to look at the project and give you a ball park quote on it.
Looking For More Information About Flexo Fountain Liners?
FUN FACT
Using Ink pan liners saves over 6 weeks of downtime per year
Disposable Ink Pans & Drip Trays installed since 1984
Gallons of Water Saved by Using Ink Pan Liners
