Narrow flexo for use in label printing

The FTA (Pacific Flexo Press Association) 2004 Annual Forum Conference revealed in the business vision for flexo printing that the US label market had a turnover of US$12 billion in 2003. It is estimated that there will still be an increase of 5% to 7% in 2004. China's domestic self-adhesive label printing market has also maintained sustained high-speed growth in recent years, with an average annual growth rate of 15% to 20%. The same is that these increases are mainly concentrated in the packaging of specialty products, such as pharmaceuticals and cosmetics, chip ID, IP cards, shrink sleeve labels, in-mold labels, stand bags and other products packaging and printing, and the technical and The complexity of the process is also gradually increasing, resulting in the frequent occurrence of a combined printing process such as screen printing, hot stamping, embossing, and the like, which increases the difficulty of printing.

First understand from the process, label printing is generally based on embossing. With the development of technology, the cold bronzing process, the hot bronzing process, the coating and glazing of the connection, and special processes such as glazing and super glazing have gradually become the mainstream of technical applications, and are more in line with the requirements for the printing of special products. These applications and narrow-web rotation technologies have covered a variety of printing processes, from basic letterpress printing to flexo printing. Flexo printing can be combined with a variety of processes such as rotary offset, rotary screen printing, and rotogravure, which can be printed at higher speeds and provide higher print quality.

With the large number of international companies setting up branches in China, the printing of their product packaging labels has gradually become localized. These packaging products often take the design of a combination of international popular multi-process printing, and with the need for anti-counterfeiting, the processability becomes more and more complex. Therefore, the connection of a variety of printing processes and their applications will increasingly become the market positioning choice. At present, companies that can provide a combination of flexographic printing and rotary screen printing include COMCO, MARKANDY, GALLUS, OMET and NILPETER. However, only NILPETER can currently provide four types of connection on a production line. Printing process, and to meet the customer's requirements for a variety of processes.

In recent years, cold stamping, hot stamping, laminating, glazing, and super glazing have attracted attention. What are these special processes?

1. Cold stamping

Cold stamping is the use of a set of flexographic printing units as a glue coating unit. After undergoing lamination with a cold stamping film and UV curing, it exhibits the effect of hot stamping. Its most direct features are high speed, low cost, and The effect of displaying dots and gradients has changed the single effect of traditional hot stamping.

2. Super glazing

Super glazing is the processing of the super glazing device, and the glazing with the orange peel effect after the ordinary glazing treatment becomes a very high brightness smoothing effect, even exceeding the glazing film covering the high gloss. Its cost is far lower than the film.

The connection application of the above two special technologies has greatly improved the product's processability and anti-counterfeiting performance, and it is in line with the current development and changes in the label market, and therefore is also increasingly concerned by label printing companies.

3.UV process

UV ink printing has become the mainstream of label printing. UV ink printing has a very distinctive feature: bright colors, fast drying speed, strong ink adhesion and so on. In addition, UV ink printing itself is divided into ordinary UV drying and cold UV process. The cold UV process is particularly suitable for thin film printing. Its basic feature is the use of special filter glass to block infrared light in the light box body, and the heat is discharged through the exhaust system and the water cooling system inside the box, and is accompanied by the bottom of the printing material. Equipped with a water cooling roller or water cooling pillow to absorb a small amount of heat attached to the surface of the material, so that there is substantially no heat interference on the surface of the material and no thermal deformation occurs.

For in-mold labels and film labels, the use of cold UV ink printing devices is the basic configuration for producing such high-end products.

From the perspective of the structural performance of the equipment, the narrow-width flexographic printing equipment is divided into a spindle transmission method and a servo rotation method. The printing method can be divided into a central stamping method and a unit-type method. The unit-type and traditional unit-type and platform are interchangeable. The difference between the unit type.

1. Is there a servo drive

Servo drive is a more fashionable equipment structure in recent years, but for the internationally developed narrow web press market, servo transmission is not new, almost all international brands can provide servo transmission In terms of printing equipment, even for domestically produced equipment, some rapidly-developing equipment manufacturers have switched to servo drives on domestically-made printing presses.
As far as the servo itself is concerned, it is of great help to improve the overall performance of printing equipment. Its main advantages are the following:

1 Decrease preparation time.
2 Reduce the adjustment time of the old product by about 30%.
3 Reducing about 40% of new product adjustment time.
4 The motor has several million pulses per revolution, which can be used for precise positioning, proportional and speed control, coupled with intelligent drives and high-speed microprocessors, the theoretical accuracy can be greatly improved. However, for the printing equipment itself, its accuracy is ultimately guaranteed by the overall precision of machining and the rationality of the structure. Without the presence of a servo drive, the accuracy of printing can be greatly improved, unless the machine itself has mechanical processing defects. You have to use servo to compensate.
5 The application of non-shaft transmission technology avoids the unavoidable torsional instability and hysteresis caused by shaft and gear transmission, thereby improving the drift of positioning in principle, and also solving the annoying gear darkness in printing. .
6 The length of the printed matter is, in principle, no longer controlled by the pitch of the gears, but can be adjusted as desired.
7 From the perspective of machine maintenance, the elimination of high-powered drive motors reduces power consumption. At the same time, a series of mechanical transmission mechanisms, including the driving gear of the plate cylinder, the gear box, the transmission chain, the transmission shaft, etc., have also been eliminated. The structure is simplified and the maintenance is simple.
The servo drive mode and the spindle drive mode are not mutually exclusive. The greatest benefit of the servo drive in practical applications is that it greatly saves the adjustment time and reduces waste, but it is relatively costly.

2. Unit printing method

The earliest application of domestic and label printing rotary printing equipment is basically the central printing of relief printing, but with the improvement of process requirements, the increase in the number of production and product requirements, unit type combination printing has gradually become the mainstream of the market.

The group-type narrow-width printing press is divided into the traditional way and the platform unit mode. The platform unit mode was originally invented by NILPETER and applied to the narrow-width rotary printing equipment. Platform-type unit printing equipment can be freely changed printing plug-in, highly flexible. Due to its characteristics of off-line adjustment preparation and very flexible interchangeability, this concept has been adopted by many narrow-web rotation manufacturers.

Narrow flexographic presses can be combined with a variety of printing processes to truly take advantage of the narrow process flexibility.

Expanded concept of narrow-width flexo printing equipment, which can be connected freely with various printing processes such as rotary offset, rotary screen printing, rotogravure and other types of printing, as well as supporting special processing techniques such as rotary bronzing, cold bronzing, and polishing The combination of film laminating, super glazing, cold UV and other means meets the increasingly complex process requirements for label printing and the need for anti-counterfeiting. There is no doubt that label printing is the main market for flexo printing. ※