Thus, the original plates for aniline printing were made of molded rubber. Moss’s Mosstype corporation was a pioneer in rubber platemaking for both aniline and letterpress printing. The first aniline press was built in 1890 by Bibby, Baron and Sons in Liverpool England. It used water based dye inks which were not chemically bleed proof. Because the colors smeared and ran, the device was called “Bibby’s Folly”.

In 1905 C. A. Holweg built an aniline press as a tail end unit on a bag machine. In 1908 he made it the first patented aniline press. The ink metering on these presses was crude until 1938 when the anilox roll was introduced. This roll, patented by Douglas Tuttle and Col. Joe Viner, employed a mechanically engraved copper coated roll with controlled cell sizes. The idea grew out of gravure printers laying down coating from a uniform cell-engraved roll. The anilox uses this process to coat the raised surfaces on the plate.

As with gravure cylinders, the anilox rolls were coated with chrome to prevent corrosion and wear. The original aniline inks gave way to ones based on polyamide resins. These stable, fast drying inks enabled web speeds to increase from 150-750 feet per minute. The 1980 clean air act lead to more extensive use of water-based inks in flexo. Water-based inks are now used extensively for printing on paper based substrates.

In the 1950s, cosolvent and polyamide inks were developed for flexo printing on transparent polymeric films such as cellophane, polyethylene and polypropylene. In the 1970s rubber plates began to make way for photopolymer plates. The use of photopolymer with their hard UV cured raised areas has enabled the significant improvement of the quality of flexographic printing. The quality is now approaching that of offset and is even impinging on gravure.