Flexo Printing: Talking about the Printing of Paper Towels

Flexo printing, as a printing method that meets the needs of future environmental protection, has been increasingly used in packaging in recent years, such as labels, folding cartons, flexible packaging, and cartons. However, the application of flexographic printing in the series of paper towel products is still unknown in the country. There are two main reasons: First, the domestic flexographic printing process started later than in foreign countries, and there is a great deal of market promotion and equipment use. Gap; Second, differences in consumer culture. Tissues are a wide range of artistic themes in the West. Printed exquisite napkins can be used on different occasions, such as Christmas and Children's Day, and fairy tales. It is also an affordable form of personalized advertising, which is not uncommon in restaurants or hotels. As people’s lifestyles are increasingly becoming more personalized and fashionable, personalized tissue paper has become a trend and trend nowadays. Special commemorative days such as weddings, banquets, or corporate annual meetings often use specially designed paper towels. In the past few years, the development of paper towel printing has been quite rapid.

At present, people mostly see the McDonald's and KFC's monochrome printed paper towels in the Chinese market. The patterns are relatively simple. However, we also noticed that in fashion-sized supermarkets such as IKEA, color napkins imported from Europe have begun to be prominently displayed. The price is much higher than that of pure white products. Clearly, the printing has brought about a comparison to paper towel products. High added value. For printing, this also means a new profit growth point that deserves everyone's attention.

Paper towel material

In paper towel printing, the choice of paper towel material is crucial, and it is also one of the basic elements that guarantee the smooth progress of printing. Compared with other packaging materials, paper towel material is characterized by very thin, soft, strong absorption, poor tensile strength, and easy to stretch. Therefore, tissue products generally pay attention to the combination of bright colors, but not too much emphasis on subtle levels and tones. Restored reproduction. In addition, the content of cotton or fiber in paper towel products is high, it is easy to seep and there are many paper dusts. For folded paper towels, there are also single-layer and multi-layer materials. For multi-layer materials, it is necessary to pay attention to the separation of the layers, because at the high speed (such as 700m/min) printing, because the paper towel material has not been embossed All levels must be guaranteed to be tightly integrated, otherwise jams will occur during printing, causing downtime. In addition, during the printing, the ink may cause the surface material to expand. If the layers are not tightly bonded, the material may also wrinkle, affect the printing effect, cause waste products, and increase material waste. Therefore, in order to ensure the quality of printed products, reduce waste, and increase production efficiency, good quality tissue materials must be selected.

Printing ink

For napkin products, it is very important to have a direct contact with the human body, such as the mouth, hands or eyes, and food. Hygiene and environmental protection are very important. At present, water-based inks used in tissue flexographic printing machines are environmentally friendly, non-polluting, and have no odor. They are fully compliant with hygiene and environmental protection requirements. In addition, when many domestic consumers talk about color napkins, they will all raise the same doubt: When using such colorful paper towels, the printed ink will not stain the skin or pollute the surrounding environment. In fact, this need not worry, tissue printers have taken full account of these in the selection of ink, especially the ink's wear resistance, water resistance, resistance to rubbing, etc. are very important technical indicators for the printing ink Through repeated skin contact tests and wear resistance, anti-mite tests, especially in home life, there may be many substances that can easily induce ink seepage. Therefore, compared with ordinary water-based inks, the formula for paper towel printing inks The addition of certain ingredients can effectively prevent the ink printed on the paper towel from seeping or dissolving when it is exposed to water or a strong alkaline substance.

The printability of the paper towel printing ink is also very important. In the printing process, the pH, viscosity and other properties must be kept stable, and the drying property is suitable, which is in accordance with the printing speed and the post-press processing requirements. The printing speed of the tissue flexographic printing machine can be as high as 700m/min or 10,000 sheets/min. In the process of high-speed printing and high-speed folding, the stability of the ink performance is very important. Improper viscosity of the ink may lead to fracture; drying is too slow and cannot Satisfy high-speed production requirements; drying too quickly can result in dirty plates.

Printing Equipment

The tissue flexographic printing press adopts a laminated or satellite structure design, and the whole machine includes a decoiling, printing and wire processing section. From the beginning of the unwinding process, the entire process is fully automatic by printing, folding, embossing, adding fragrances, counting to finished tissues. Flexo printing equipment uses a modular design, flexibility in configuration is very high, the number of all units including the printing unit can be increased or decreased, the printing plant can be tailored according to the needs of their own business.

The characteristics of tissue flexographic printing presses are high speed and high yield. Take the paper towel flexo printing machine produced by Omega Company as an example. The format is 500 to 2 740 mm, and the printing speed can reach 600 to 700 m/min; the printing unit can be configured up to 8 color groups; In the paper-out part, according to the size of the output, there are several paper delivery methods such as single paper path, double paper path and even 8 paper paths.

In the printing process of paper towels, due to the particularity of paper towel materials, the control of printing tension is one of the key factors affecting the quality of printed products. Many high-end flexographic printing equipments have adopted shaftless driving technology, and independent DC motor control is used in each unit of unwinding, printing, embossing, folding, etc., and equipped with digitally controlled multiple floating rollers and paper rollers, making the equipment Tension control and register control effects have been greatly improved. Secondly, the drying performance of the equipment is also very important. The tissue flexographic printing machine uses infrared, hot air, or a combination of both drying methods, and is equipped with a water-cooled roller program, so it can achieve better drying results and meet product requirements.

However, there is still such a problem in the printing of paper towels. Because the paper towel material itself has many papers, the surface strength is poor, and it is easy to lose powder and lose hair, adhere to the printing plate and gradually accumulate, and it will cause dirty plates and block plates. Shutdown cleaning. In response to this annoying problem, many manufacturers have installed a vacuum cleaner on the printing unit to solve it, or a special squeegee can also reduce the incidence of such problems. Omit uses a wheel pressure device, a closed double-knife, and a vacuum cleaner to virtually eliminate this phenomenon. At the same time, Oemite also provides a device that can clean the plate without stopping the machine, which can reduce downtime. ,Increase productivity.

Subsequent processing is an important part of the flexo printing of paper towels. Taking folding paper towels as an example, the folding of paper towels is very particular. Four sides are required to be square, angular and angular. In this process, tension control is particularly critical. Tissue folding is flexible and diverse.

Embossing is also an important part of the tissue production process. Embossing can improve the softness and hygroscopicity of the tissue. At the same time, embossed patterns with different patterns also add aesthetic effects. There are various ways of embossing, such as point-to-point, steel-on-steel, steel-to-paper, steel-to-rubber, etc. It can also be divided into partial embossing and all embossing.

The strong development momentum of paper towel flexo printing has attracted people's attention. The US FTA report stated that although in the formal statistics on the North American flexo printing market in 2002, the data part of the flexographic printing paper towel business has not yet been included, but from According to the situation of tissue printers, which account for 5% to 8% of their members, tissue printing represents a new and powerful profit growth space, which has attracted considerable attention in the downturn of the North American flexo printing industry. Many paper towel flexographic printing companies are full of confidence in the current and future paper towel printing market. Statistics show that: In 2005, paper towels and napkins printing business will grow steadily by 3% to 5% per year.

These market dynamics can be used as reference for manufacturers engaged in the flexographic printing industry in China and those who intend to invest in flexo printing. Together, they will make the flexographic printing market bigger and stronger and win wider space for development.