Analysis of the introduction of digital printing equipment in packaging printing

How much value is there in the packaging of the world today? Statistics show that packaging directly affects the needs of consumers. The shape, color, and text of the package are all potential influences of the brand's characteristics and potentially reflect the quality of the product. Outsourcing is a strong factor in the 2/3 purchase decision. It can be seen that packaging printing will be a new force in the declining printing market. In fact, packaging printing has occupied an important position both in China and in other major printing markets in the world. With the development of flexo printing and the improvement of system speed and automation, the application of packaging and printing in food, beverages, medical treatment and other industries will inevitably develop in scale and globalization. In the coming year, the packaging industry will become the fastest growing industry.

Digital printing has become the development direction of future printing. In the field of lithographic printing, digital printing technology has become more and more mature and gradually becomes the dominant printing technology. As a major aspect of printing, packaging and printing has become an urgent hope for people to enter the field of packaging and printing. At present, flexible printing occupies a dominant position in packaging and printing. Can flexible printing not be able to introduce digital equipment like offset printing? The answer is yes.

The world's first digital flexographic imaging device, CDI, was demonstrated in Drupa 95. The introduction of the device immediately produced a strong response and a huge stimulatory effect in the market, and people have high expectations for this. After all, DuPont's flexo plate is in the leading position in the industry, and Barco's electronic products are also at the top level in the world. The joint attack of these two giants has played a decisive role. People attach great importance to it.

For a long time, flexographic printing has always used the film-making method. This method of plate-making has many advantages, such as: low cost, wide range of substrates suitable for printing, large selection of ink, simple structure of printing press, and quality of printed matter. High and so on. In plastic flexible packaging printing, gravure printing is the biggest competitor of flexographic printing. However, flexo printing itself has a very large number of dots, often with breakpoints in high light areas, and poor stability during printing.

The emergence of digital flexo completely changed this situation. The advantages of CTP are many, and the two main points are emphasized here. The first is to compare the appearance of digital flexo plate with the plate. The surface of the former plate is smoother, and the various elements of printing are separated from the dots. The small spot on the ground to the fine high-light area is almost completely on one plane. In traditional flexographic printing plates, the fine dots in the highlights are usually more prominent than others. Even after the revision, the tips of these dots are several microns higher than the solid parts on the same plate, which means that during the printing process, Before the actual part of the field was completely printed, the outlets of the Gaoguang District were squashed and caused more serious network expansion. In contrast, CTP plates provide more consistent printing characteristics, effectively reducing dot gains. The dot expansion of digital flexo printing is very stable, and dot gains are relatively small, which is almost the same as offset printing. Whether it is a small yang text (or line) or a scribbled text (or line), it can be clearly printed and not blunted after printing; 2% of the dots on the printing plate remain unchanged at 2% after image plate-making and printing. . Of course, this also has certain conditions - in fact, compared with the traditional analog plate-making method, the cost of the two prepress plates is almost the same, so the price of the plates used in digital flexo printing may be lower than the ordinary ones. Flexo plates are slightly more expensive.

However, there is a big difference between digital flexo and traditional flexo. The quality of the final printed product obtained by digital flexo printing is higher, so flexo printing can take away the printing business of the web film from gravure printing and also take away the carton printing business from offset printing. Moreover, the cost of digital flexo printing has also been greatly reduced, especially for short-lived printing, because the commissioning and operation of flexographic printing presses is very simple and fast. A six-color job change takes less than half an hour. If sleeve technology is used, the time will be shorter. Although the price of the plate used for digital flexo printing is slightly higher, the overall production cost is reduced because printing costs are greatly reduced. From the above analysis, it can be seen that there are indeed many advantages to using digital technology in packaging printing. Therefore, it is feasible to introduce digital printing in packaging printing. In fact, some companies have introduced CTP technology into flexible printing and realized digital flexo printing. There are currently two types of imaging systems: one is an imaging system using argon (Yag) lasers (such as those of Barco and ohi1/Scheepers) and the other is a system that uses laser diode imaging (such as Creo Angel company equipment). The latter is a typical offset CTP application in flexo printing. This fact proves that the introduction of digital printing equipment into packaging printing is entirely feasible.

As a big printing country, China should become a strong printing country. As digital printing, packaging and printing will occupy a leading position in the future, we should also pay enough attention to work hard to realize full digital packaging printing as soon as possible.