The hottest flexographic printing is yesterday, to

Yesterday ● today ● tomorrow (III)

tomorrow of flexographic printing

looking at the history and current situation of flexographic printing, we can make a prospect for its future. Although the current situation of the development of soft printing in China is not satisfactory, there are objective and subjective reasons for this. With the progress of science and technology and the continuous embodiment of its 180 ° superiority and twists, it is believed that its dominant position in the packaging and printing industry will be more consolidated. Maybe we can get some enlightenment from the following description

first of all, in terms of market, flexographic printing market is very broad, such as inserts, business forms, packaging cards, corrugated paper, trademarks, film packaging, paper flexible packaging, paper bags, plastic bags, containers, fiberboard and tape

flexographic printing has been closely related to people. The styles and words displayed on the packages in supermarkets and the decoration of linen patterns on clothes are all completed by flexible printing. Flexible printing products can be seen everywhere in department stores. Plastic bags and paper bags are often used to take items home. Daily toothpaste covers and toothpaste boxes are printed flexibly. The design patterns of cartons and glass bottles used in orange juice are all flexible printing. The fresh-keeping plastic bags used to pack breakfast rolls and bread are flexible printed, and the control keyboard (control board) on the copier operated by it is flexible printed. Flexible printing has such a wide range of uses, and with the progress of science and technology and the continuous upgrading of equipment and materials, its market share will further increase. Now, it has spread to the field of offset printing business, such as printing newspapers, books and periodicals, etc. it has also been undertaken by flexible printing, and in terms of machinery, At the drupa exhibition in 2000, the 7th world printing conference in 2001 and the Beijing International Printing Technology Exhibition, it can be seen that many well-known printing machine manufacturers have continuously introduced machines integrating glue, softness and concavity, which will further expand the business field of flexographic printing. Therefore, it can be said that the future development prospect of flexographic printing is bright

secondly, due to the incomparable advantages of flexographic printing, such as the use of environmentally friendly materials, short production cycle, simple equipment, etc., it can be printed not only on the plane, but also on non plane, which is unmatched by other printing. As long as these advantages can be reflected, its competitiveness in the printing industry will be greatly improved. In addition, other printing fields, such as books and newspapers, are now increasingly being strongly impacted by new and high technologies such as electronic publishing, multimedia publishing, online publishing, and the market share is declining. The main market of the packaging industry occupied by flexo printing is relatively less affected by these new and high technologies. Therefore, its development space is still vast

in terms of technological innovation, with the continuous improvement of people's living standards, the packaging industry has to use modern science and technology to accelerate the development to meet people's higher and higher requirements. Therefore, it also urges flexographic printing to introduce new high-tech and carry out a new round of scientific and technological innovation on Printing machines and raw materials. For example, the shaftless independent drive of flexographic printing machine, laser engraving roller, widely used simplification technology, digital plate making, CDI imaging technology, automatic registration control technology, UV drying technology and so on. For example, in terms of prepress, flexographic printing can also adopt most of the advanced technologies of offset printing, such as web printing, computerization and digitization of prepress system, etc. in short, as long as all the advanced technologies of prepress process in offset printing can be applied in flexographic printing, it is only different from offset printing in terms of material selection, such as film, etc., try not to use general offset film, And choose the film suitable for flexographic printing. In the field of layout design and prepress technology, flexographic printing is also shifting to digital workflow to seek to significantly improve the speed. In terms of hardware and software, standard work platforms are also widely used. The price of work terminals is also declining, and the processing speed is getting faster and faster. Application software has also become very powerful. Compared with the very expensive special system a few years ago, it has produced high-quality products with complete functions. Due to the comprehensive digitization of prepress engineering, in the past, skilled workers used to use manual operations, which required hours of overprinting and continuous drying, which took only a few minutes to complete. In the field of flexographic printing, CTP has been developed and introduced. This technology will make traditional film output history. That is, after the processing of text and image data, CTP equipment will directly image the obtained data in the digital photosensitive flexo without making intermediate programs such as film. CTP can contribute to providing the quality required for flexographic printing, and also achieve great results in shortening the production period of prepress engineering

in addition, there have been new developments in the embossing roll and its engraving technology. The new laser engraving embossing roll has finer holes, better ink transfer performance, and can print smaller highlights. Ink technology has also been greatly improved. UV ink has greatly improved the color consistency and quality consistency of printed matter, and the patterns that were difficult to print in flexo printing can also be well copied, such as printing several or several lines of particularly small Yin characters in a large area of the field. In terms of plate materials, the emergence of new digital imaging flexo printing plates and the utilization and innovation of modified materials promote the innovation and application of household appliances, which can ensure that smaller dots are formed in the highlight area, and the Yin text is clearer and the Yang text is not blurred. The ink transfer performance of new polymer materials has been greatly improved. In addition, the digital sleeve technology (that is, imaging on the sleeve in a digital way) ensures that the registration of the printing plate is more accurate, the error is smaller, and the function of "fast conversion of live parts" can be realized

third, in terms of management, the use of advanced computer technology and management system can not only realize the monitoring system from single control to centralized control, from single machine control to the whole production line, but also ensure that the equipment will not produce waste materials when registering the equipment in the shutdown state. Using the modular automatic operation system, you can pre select the menu, centrally operate the unwinding/winding unit, printing unit and drying unit, and you can also select the camera "printing" observation module to view the whole printing process on the display screen. Can communication technology is used to connect functional modules to exchange information. With the help of modem, select remote fault diagnosis device to help customers

in short, in recent years, other traditional printing processes have either remained stagnant or tended to decline, while flexographic printing processes have maintained a rapid growth momentum and continue to expand market share. Moreover, in the next few years, the trend of light and stable action during loading may continue. With the development of technology, the quality of flexographic printing products has been comparable to that of gravure, embossing and offset printing products. Ordinary offset printing movable parts (such as cartons), gravure printing movable parts (such as food packaging and cigarette bags) and embossing movable parts (such as self-adhesive labels) can generally be completed by flexographic printing process

when we put the products obtained by different printing methods together for comparison, it is difficult to distinguish which is flexographic printing and which is gravure printing (or offset printing and embossed printing) from the surface alone. Even experts usually have to use a magnifying glass to determine which process is used for printing

flexographic printing technology is currently in the stage of rapid development, and its own quality advantages and potential may not be fully exerted. Moreover, the development of science and technology is changing with each passing day, and new technologies are always emerging. We believe that with the gradual application of new technologies, the quality of flexographic printing may be further improved. Its development prospect is gratifying

information source: flexo gravure