Technological innovation of the hottest flexograph

Technological innovation of flexographic printing

the market share of flexographic printing in European and American countries is expanding, and XPS is 650 yuan per cubic meter, which will undoubtedly be in the leading position in all printing methods in the future. In Japan, the expansion of flexographic printing was delayed because users were too cool about quality

steadily expanding flexographic printing market

recently, it is reported that the market share of flexographic printing in various countries has expanded a lot. In recent years, the output value of flexographic printing in the United States has increased at an annual rate of 7%. At present, 70% of the packaging and printing market adopts flexographic printing (see GATF world ~ 6). The market share of flexographic printing in Europe has also increased. Its overall market share in printed matter is 27%, and only in the field of packaging materials, it also has a market share of about 50%

in the future, it is expected that the market share of flexographic printing will further expand in European and American countries. For example, in the full printing market in the United States, including general printing, the market share of flexographic printing is expected to increase from 18% in 2000 to 20% in 2010 (see taga2001 news letter no, 137). In the past ten years, it has increased from 18% to 20%. It seems that there will be little change. However, in the same forecast, digital printing will expand from 8% in 2000 to 20% in 2010. On the other hand, the market share has increased significantly. Lithography has decreased from 46% to 37%, gravure printing has decreased from 18% to 15%, and letterpress printing has decreased from 7% to 5%

contrary to the expansion of flexographic printing market share in Europe and the United States, the Japanese market has almost stagnated in the past 20 years due to the cool demand of users for quality, and even shrunk. However, in recent years, due to technological innovation, attention has been paid to the field from prepress to printing

at the 7th world printing conference held in Beijing in may not long ago, Robert Reich, vice president of Cyrel, also talked about the great development of flexographic printing in the future. Because its quality is no less than lithography and gravure, and the production speed has been improved, the biggest advantage is that digital proofing improves the production environment

not inferior to the quality of lithography and gravure

compared with lithography and gravure printing, flexographic printing has always been dominant in terms of labor price, equipment price and scrap rate. Recently, people are concerned about environmental protection. In this regard, the practicality of water-based ink and UV ink is recognized as superior to gravure printing

for flexographic printing, the biggest problem is its quality. In the past, the quality of flexographic printing was indeed inferior to that of lithographic printing and gravure printing. However, since the development and introduction of digital plate with photosensitive resin type in 1995, the quality distance with other formats has been narrowed. In the past, flexographic printing has not reached the high-profile reproduction and tone reproduction required by the level, and now it can be printed by digital printing plates to a certain quality. Moreover, sometimes the quality of printing is higher than that of lithography or intaglio printing. IOPP (in stituteof packaging pr6. swing failure is mostly due to loose electromechanical belts ofessionals) is the food department selected and commended every year (Ameri Star packaging award can be won). Flexographic printing products often receive the best award. Of course, digital plates are used for printing this kind of printed products

the focus of competition is production speed

the quality of flexographic printing has finally been improved to a level equal to that of lithography and gravure printing. Therefore, the next task in front of flexographic printing is to improve the production speed. Various technological improvements have occurred in this regard

in printing engineering, such as automatically installing rollers and sleeves, cutting from round steel, square steel and 6 angle steel, so as to speed up the replacement time of the operation. When this technology is combined with the automatic cleaning device, everyone in the printing machine can undertake various operations at the same time, and the whole operation efficiency is greatly improved. In addition, when using a 10 or 12 unit printer, the remaining 5 to 6 units can also be set during the printing period of 5 to 6 units. The improvement of registration control using video technology is also conducive to the improvement of printing speed

in the field of layout design and prepress engineering, we are turning to digital workflow 3, and then turning the hand wheel to seek to greatly improve the speed

in terms of hardware and software, standard work platforms are also widely used, and 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

relying on the improvement of advanced digital proofing

one of the strengths of flexographic printing in the past is the use of a large number of spot colors. However, until today, the only way to correctly grasp color proofing is cromalin's analog proofing. This method requires negative pictures, and proofing requires skilled labor. It is a labor-intensive operation, which is quite time-consuming. Moreover, in the process of printing, the dot increase is very serious, so we must first make two negatives that are different from the negatives for proofing and printing plates. It is uneconomical in terms of time and cost, and at the same time, it becomes a factor causing redundant engineering variables

until recently, analog proofing began to be replaced by a continuous proofing system with an inkjet method like digital cromalin. First of all, it is characterized by good reproducibility and stability of color and tone. In addition, the wide field of color reproduction, which can accurately show the gradient of spot color, is also a great advantage

various manufacturers provide color matching functions with very high accuracy at a very low price. Because the printing specifications are diverse and the equipment price is also cheap, the proofing machine for Remote Proofing is also suitable

mature and practical CTP

in the field of flexographic printing, CTP has been developed and has begun to be introduced. CTP can contribute to providing the quality required for flexographic printing, and also achieve great results in shortening the production period of prepress engineering

although the first generation CTP has experienced three years of actual performance, its equipment cost is indeed too high because it is a new technology. Therefore, its market demand is limited to professional plate making units that can maintain and obtain the volume of work that meets the high price equipment costs. However, the price of the small flexible CTP of Barco and Creo Scitex recently introduced and published is relatively cheap, which undoubtedly attracts more printing enterprises to introduce CTP. It is estimated that the plate making companies specializing in digital imaging will also gradually introduce CTP

as mentioned above, new technologies have been selected in the internal workflow of production engineering from designers to plate making professionals, as well as printing companies, in order to improve productivity. In the future, we will expand the market by strengthening the networking of communication among enterprises, including users, with the goal of further shortening the production period. In fact, this trend has begun. (printing art)