What are flexographic printing sleeves?

Flexographic printing sleeves are used to mount printing plates on it. Printing plates are mounted on the flexo plate sleeves, which are floated onto the air mandrel by using compressed air.

Initially, flexographic printing plates were mounted on the cylinders directly. But since plates were not easily interchangeable and using multiple cylinders for several jobs lead to high costs and storage problems, flexo printing sleeves were developed.

The main advantage of the flexo printing sleeves is that they can be easily floated on and off the air mandrels. The flexographic printing sleeves are also known as “Plate carriers”, “Plate sleeves” or “Press sleeves”