FloClear started as an idea that David Stinson had from his early days of being the General Manager of Pacific Press in Vancouver, Canada back in the early 70’s. Why can’t fountain solution be continuously cleaned such that its longevity is extended without adversely affecting the inherent properties of the fountain solution itself. It was almost a puzzle that evolved over a 30 year period until the answers finally came in 2003.
Was there a way to extract the contaminants of the fountain solution such that the same fountain solution can be continuously recycled and have the same effectiveness continuously? The contaminants about which we speak are introduced as the fountain solution is run through the press and mixes with other consumables such as ink, paper, solvents, etc… These various contaminants combine to breakdown the effectiveness and therefore the original integrity of the original fount solution such that the printer is compromised to continuously troubleshoot while using this dirty chemistry which in turn can cause less than quality print results or cause the press to completely stop production, dump the entire press chemistry, wash the system, and start anew with a fresh batch of solution. Either way, troubleshooting or completely stopping the press is costly, time consuming, and takes away from production and therefore revenue.
Just after the new millennia, the needed breakthrough to this question came to fruition. A core group of individuals who had known each other for many years and all of whom had an extensive number of years or experience in various niches of the printing industry introduced the first FloClear unit in 2003. The original unit was somewhat rudimentary in appearance, but was specifically designed to insure that it could be installed and operate without compromise on the widest format press. The idea of this design was that the longevity of the FloClear media needs to be able to operate for extended periods of time on the biggest and the fastest presses. And so was born the FloClear D-02 and it was put into the field for testing to see if the original questions of having continuously recycled fountain solution could in fact be a very realizable feat. The unit was actually tested for well over 1 1/2 years before being introduced at drupa 2004.
After many installations and success stories, that certainly have included a few “bumps in the road”, the idea of fountain solution recycling and the its ability to increase the useful life of fount chemistry has become a MAINSTREAM focus and OPPORTUNITY for printers the world over. There have been many “knock offs” that have arisen to make the same claims that FloClear has proven, and yet none of them offer the same performance. FloClear’s 3 stages of separate and different media provide a result to which no other competitive product can offer or compare for the price. The proof is overwhelming and the results continue to speak for themselves. FloClear has changed a little from the original design and has introduced both a 2nd generation of “floor model” and a cabinet version with a PLC touch screen.
Further development and integration with partners is forthcoming such that FloClear hopes to have various models to meet the needs and requirements of all size presses for various size printing operations. To that, we have various MODEL that are specifically SIZED to operate from a half-size SHEET FED press all the way to the widest of WEB presses. Please take the opportunity to speak with a distributor or FloClear directly to inquire about what FloClear can do for you and your operation to increase your production/revenue and lessen your impact on the environment.
