Supporting the wide variety of machines and processes used in Label and Narrow web flexographic printing is a huge task. LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN's experience as a supplier for both small label manufacturers through to narrow web press manufacturers has helped us gain the experience we need to help you in your application. Whether you need a single anilox or fifty, we have a solution.

Competing on the world stage is tough and it doesn't get any tougher than in the wide web flexographic industry. LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN successfully supplies anilox rollers to printers all over the globe. Wherever you are from and whatever you do, produce tickets in the USA, check-out bags in Thailand or printing machines in Germany, LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN has gathered the knowledge to help you in your application

Lets face it, the machinery used in the corrugated post-print, pre-print or in the tissue paper industry is big. It's not so easy to change an anilox roller, especially at these scales which are very expensive. You need reliability and good service to make sure you machinery stays running. LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN has developed a range of solutions for the big machinery sector of the flexographic market that meets all demands.

Whether you run adhesive tape machinery or a corrugated post-print press some aspects of your application remain the same. The heart of the anilox roller is the cell structure and LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN offers a variety of solutions for your applications. We can advise you on what is available and help you choose the most suitable technology for your application..

A banded anilox can be an useful tool for printers. Not only does it offer a way of testing different anilox volumes but it can also be used as an ongoing reference standard used to compare new inks or rollers.
LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN can offer a variety of banded anilox rollers suitable for customising or fine tuning your applications.

LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN offers a number of useful accessories in helping you manage your ink delivery system. Whether you need doctor blade, cellscopes, protective covers, or storage containers LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN can offer you a solution.

Unlike conventional plate making production of direct laser engraved printing plates and rollers is a digitally controlled 3D process. Aspects of the formation of the image like the first step height, total relief height and shoulder width can all be controlled separately from the image detail.

Laser engraving occurs as a cylindrical process. Materials capable of being coated on roller or sleeve bases can be engraved with continuous seamless designs. The materials that can be applied to a roller or sleeve base include a wide range of photopolymers and elastomers..

Printing traditionally uses halftoning to represent continuous tone (grayscale) images. Laser engraving can take advantage of the 3D aspects of a printing plate to offer a higher level of control than conventional platemaking processes. Due to the digital nature of the laser engraving process traditional halftone data can be combined with grayscale data in a number of ways. This adds control over the 3D details of an engraving, first step height, total relief and shoulder width, to the realtime imaging of the plate or roller. Significantly, this hybrid data can also extend the total number of grayscale (tone) equivalents a laser engraving can emulate without processing images at extremely high resolutions. Halftone line counts depend on the characteristics of the plate material being engraved and the type of laser used for engraving.

LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN can supply and engrave a variety of plate materials. As laser engraving is not a photographic process, laser engraved plates can be made of photopolymer or opaque materials like natural or synthetic elastomers. Laser engraving offers the printer the widest range of available plate materials.

LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN can supply a wide range of sleeves for your application. Whether you require sleeves for platemounting, solid printing, coating applicators or anilox sleeves LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN has a solution for your application..

LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN can supply a wide variety of cleaning chemicals and solutions for your printing, coating or industrial applications. Solutions for problems relating in waterborne, solvent or UV cured systems are available.

LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN offers a number of useful accessories in helping you manage your ink delivery system. Whether you need doctor blade, cellscopes, protective covers, or storage containers LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN can offer you a solution.

We offer an extensive range of compounds to suit your needs from the classic to the speciality elastomers. From natural, neoprene and epdm to speciality compounds such as Silicone, Hypalon and NBR/PVC. Hardness range from 15 to 90 shore A.

Using the latest technology all compounds are blended in house to ensure conformity and consistency from one roll to the next.

Why do the large Paper and Pulp companies use Littlejohn? This is a most demanding industry requiring quick lead times and consistent quality.

We have to ensure 'we get it right the first time every time'. Our corrugated roller coverings are produced using the latest equipment to obtain a consistent diameter and parallelism to improve uniform ink distribution. We also grind accurate parabolic crowns with computer controlled crowning equipment.

We have an extensive range of rubber compunds to suit all flexographic printing for water based, solvent and UV inks. These rolls require high accuracy on the diameter, excellent TIR concentricity and a quality polished surface.

Following extensive development and many trials Laserlife LittleJohn has formulated a new compound for offset and lithographic printing. This new product will last longer with improved wear resistance, less distortion and friendly to harsh solvents compared to the traditional rubber compounds.

We call it OFFSET 40 and it will increase your print run & reduces downtime, making for greater savings.

We have many options for various types of coating rollers from different rubber compounds to hard face coatings. These rollers will offer a hard wearing and consistent coating, together with a high quality surface finish with excellent release properties.

We coat various types of plastic synthetic coatings for the printing industries. Our two main synthetic coatings are Corvel and Rilsan. Synthetic materials which provide resistance to chemicals while offering excellent abrasion, wear and impact resistance with a low coefficient of friction

Using the latest plasma system we are able to produce dense, hard wearing coatings that will withstand harsh environments. The diamond lapped super finished process yields a high quality ceramic surface which delivers excellent hydrophilic properties ideal for dampening rollers in Lithographic printing.

Ceramic rollers are also used for metering rollers, feed rollers and transfer rollers.

A variety of metals sprayed includes Nickel Chrome, Aluminium, Tungsten carbide with nickel matrix, Copper, Bronze, Brass, Molybdenum, Stainless Steels, Stellite and Zinc. The coatings are used widely for wear resistance, corrosion resistance and structure restoration

• Superb electrical and thermal conductivity.
• Affinity to water or inks
• Thick coating can be sprayed
• Readily machineable and will produce an excellent finish.

• Resist corrosive gases and oxidation temperatures up to 1000 °C, it can be used to resist heat and prevent oxidation scaling of conventional low alloy steels.
• Used as an oxygen barrier under sprayed coatings of ceramics. and is also used as a bond coating for ceramics. The corrosion is significantly inhibited with this material.
• Machineable.

• Used to protect iron and steel against corrosion.
• Suitable for alkaline environment.
• Comparatively cheap coating.

Recently we have developed a new coating process and material that has been very well received. It is our non stick coating. This thermal sprayed coating not only has the non stick properties but also is very wear resistant and excellent against corrosion. The non stick surface offers:

• Excellent release which minimises the build-up of residue from manufactured product onto coated production equipment. It releases what-ever it comes in contact with. (Examples: ink, glue, food, paint, varnish, adhesives, etc.) An excellent release property (i.e. mould release).
• The release coatings have lower friction which decrease the drag of product over stationary or guiding parts. They also provide durability and conductivity of static.
• These coatings are designed for ease of cleaning which minimise accumulation of residue and product pick-off. Cleaning is quick, easy, and operator friendly.

Any of various hard, heat-resistant, corrosion resistant coatings made up of non-metallic materials.

• Very hard coating, the hardness is 70-75Rc.
• Excellent resistance to corrosion, sliding wear and particle erosion.
• Very dense coating, porosity is less than 2%. Insoluble in acids, alkalis and alcohol.
• Dissociates easily, hence ideal for laser engraving and widely used for the wear protective coating of printing rolls which are subsequently laser engraved

• Good abrasion and erosion resistance.
• Easier to grind than Chrome Oxide coatings.
• Better hydrophilic property than chrome oxide coatings.
• Less brittle, more ductile than Chrome Oxide coatings.

Usually very hard metallic, with superior wear resistance. Ideal for long wearing surfaces and edges.

• Resistant to abrasion, erosion and certain level of hammer wear loading.
• Good sliding wear resistance at low temperature.
• Coatings are hard and dense with high bond strength.
• Good fretting resistance.
• Excellent coatings to replace electroplating hard chrome coatings.

Synthetic materials which provide resistance to chemicals while offering excellent abrasion, wear and impact resistance with a low coefficient of friction. Hard and durable coating with smooth and gloss surface.

• Excellent abrasion and wear resistance.
• Good electrical properties, good chemical and solvent resistance
• Corrosion resistance; resistant to most strong alkalis, weak acids, commercial solvents, inks, oils, greases and gasoline.
• Excellent machineability makes it easy to be knurled which is suitable for Micrometric rollers in the printing industry.

Rilsan coating has similar properties of Corvel except its limitation on coating thickness is 2-3 mm.

• Superb electrical and thermal conductivity.
• Affinity to water or inks
• Thick coating can be sprayed
• Readily machineable and will produce an excellent finish

• Resist corrosive gases and oxidation temperatures up to 1000 °C, it can be used to resist heat and prevent oxidation scaling of conventional low alloy steels.
• Used as an oxygen barrier under sprayed coatings of ceramics.
• It is used as a bond coating for ceramics. The corrosion is significantly inhibited with this material.
• Machineable.

• Used to protect iron and steel against corrosion.
• Suitable for alkaline environment.
• Comparatively cheap coating

We also supply elastomer and hard face coating roller solutions to the following industries.

• Glass
• Timber
• Textiles
• Plastics
• Steel
• Mining
• Paper & Pulp

Due to our many years in the thermal spray industry we have accumulated the knowledge and skills to be able to offer hard face coatings for other applications.

Included in our list of parts that we coat are:

• General machine parts such as piston rings, guides and bearings.
• Pumps, valves, mechanical sealing elements for the Petrochemical and chjemical industry.
• Compressor parts.
• Parts for the printing, paper and pulp industry.

Regardless of the type of anilox you buy it's performance over extended periods depends as much on how it is looked after as how it was made. Good housekeeping is vitally important in helping you get the best out of your anilox investment.
LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN can offer a wide range of cleaning solutions to help you maintain or restore the performance of your anilox rollers.

After continuous usage, it is quite often rollers are worn out on bearing journals and damaged on keyways and threads. Some shafts can be snapped off after excessive force and imbalance.

LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN offers customers comprehensive corrective engineering to salvage damaged and worn-out rollers: The service includes:

• Repairing bearing journals, threads and keyway journals
• Replacing broken shafts
• Straightening bent journals
• Dynamically balance rollers to customer specified RPM
• Repairing internal bores
• For rollers used in an extreme corrosion environment, build-up roller bases with a stainless steel layer to prevent corrosion on coatings

The corrective engineering jobs are carried out by methods of welding, hard-chrome plating, machining, grinding and dynamical balancing etc. They are done both in house and out sources to guarantee high quality standard and customer satisfaction.

For many years, LASERLIFE LITTLEJOHN have manufactured new roller bases for all type of machines. We manufacture new bases for narrow and wide web as well as corrugated and offset machines.

We are able to either visit on site to measure up the existing roll bases or measure in house at our facility. We then produce an Autocad drawing which the customer approves before commencement. We also have many hundred drawings on file. It is crucial that we use the best possible but affordable metals to ensure the roller will last for many years. We always stress relieve the barrel and journal than machine to required surface finishes.