Flexographic printing has received unprecedented attention in our country. In recent years, many flexographic four-brush devices have been introduced. Many people in the country think that flexo printing is a new process that will replace gravure or offset printing, and even think that a wave of “soft rubber turns, soft turns, soft turns†has emerged. But on the other hand, these devices did not achieve the desired results (including product quality, productivity, and economic benefits), and there was a big gap compared with the original situation of introducing offset and gravure printing equipment. In order to achieve a healthy and rapid development of our country's flexographic printing, we must solve some problems in the development of flexographic and gravure printing from the understanding and practice.
1. Trends of Foreign Leading Vendors
We should note some of the simplest facts:
A. Gravure and flexo are not new printing processes. Although flexo printing was really valued in China in recent years, it has experienced many years of development as gravure.
B. More and more manufacturing facilities in the world can produce both types of equipment simultaneously. The development of the international colonel's well-known manufacturers has two different types of situations: one is the original gravure machine manufacturer, and later increased the production capacity of flexo presses through acquisitions and holdings; another type of flexo press manufacturer, later Increase the production of gravure printing machines. Companies such as Cerutti, Valmet Rotomec, and Bobst belong to the former category, and companies such as W&H and UTECO belong to the latter category.
C. From the point of view of the printing and processing manufacturers, many well-known foreign printing manufacturers have conducted research on these two types of investment and made corresponding investments. Both have installed flexo and gravure printing equipment to provide customers with a variety of possibilities. .
In short, internationally, these two technologies are increasingly inclined to adopt a more just and tolerant attitude. But the opinions we hear about are often from the perspective of a certain type of equipment or material (plate, ink) manufacturers, often with a certain degree of bias.
2. Application areas and key product directions
The main application areas of gravure and flexographic printing are roughly the same, but not exactly the same. In the fields of packaging and trademark printing, publishing and printing, decorative printing (grain paper and transfer printing) and other special printing (such as banknotes, stamps, lottery and other securities), the advantages of gravure printing and flexo printing are different.
A. Packaging and trademark printing. This is the main competition area for gravure and flexo printing. The main application products of the flexo are corrugated cardboard, labels, flexible packaging and folding cartons.
a. Corrugated cardboard (post-printing and pre-printing): The printing of corrugated cardboard is more than 85-98% of the foreign countries. The four versions of the flexible version are used. There is not much difference between Gangzhou and the United States. The smallest difference in all packaging products. The situation in our country is very different: offset printing still occupies a considerable share, and flexo printing has not become the dominant technology. However, in this area, the competition between flexo printing and offset printing is mainly. Judging from various factors, this area should be one of the most promising applications for the development of flexo printing in China. The current difficulties are: China's large number of corrugated boxes printing manufacturers, the average size is small, the overall investment ability is not strong, so the pace of technological upgrading is slow. In the United States, the largest market share of packaging is corrugated cardboard and cartons, so the proportion of flexographic printing is larger in the whole printing process.
b. Labels: Label printing is a fairly large industry in many developed countries, and the use of flexographic printing is 85-95%. In China, labels, especially sticker printing, have developed rapidly in recent years, but the overall scale is still small. There should be considerable room for development in this industry, and the promotion of flexographic printing can also be expected to develop greatly.
c. Flexible packaging: Flexible packaging is one of the main branches of packaging, and it is also the industry that has the most disputes in terms of flexibility and intaglio in the world and has the greatest development differences. In this area, the United States uses a flexo version of about 70-80%, Europe, 35-40%, Asia (including Japan, South Korea, etc.) this ratio is between 5-8%, while China's this ratio is even lower. The biggest problem in the promotion of flexographic technology in our country is estimated in the flexible packaging field. At present, the main difficulties are concentrated on: some attempts in the early stage did not achieve the desired results; understanding of the degree of acceptance and control of the flexographic printing quality; equipment (satellite) and the cost of media; technical support environment.
d. Folding tray:
Although the proportion of the carton used for flexographic printing varies from country to country, there is not much difference: 30-40% in the United States and 10% in Europe. It can be seen that among the four types of packaging mentioned above, the proportion of flexographic printing in carton printing may be the lowest. In fact, in the field of folding cartons, there are many ways of competition for glue, soft, gravure. However, in our country, the narrow-width unit type flexo presses introduced mainly aim at this field, and the gap between the actual effect and the expected value is indeed not small.
B. Publishing and printing. Gravure and flexo printing are used in two main areas of publishing: newspapers, periodical printing. In the printing of newspapers, the flexographic version has been used in the United States and Europe at a ratio of about 20-38%. The gravure is mainly used for the printing of newspaper supplements; the gravure is an important printing method for high-grade, high-volume publications and samples in the United States and Europe. They are actually competing with offset printing.
C. Other printing. Woodgrain printing is a very fast growing industry in the world in recent years. Gravure printing is used in this area, using solvent-based and water-based inks, and the proportion of water-based inks is increasing rapidly. Since woodgrain printing is often used in the first unit and requires very fine levels (since ESA static-assisted ink removal system is used), the length of the graphic (1500-1900mm) is large, it is not used. Other printing methods. For similar reasons, transfer printing is also basically a gravure market. All the products that require higher security performance (especially valuable securities) have increasingly adopted combination brushes at home and abroad in recent years, but the main technology is still gravure.
3. About equipment and materials
A. Structure type. The gravure printing machine adopts the unit type structure, and the situation at home and abroad is basically the same; but from the overseas situation, most of the flexographic printing presses are of the satellite type, and the unit type and the stacking type only occupy a very small proportion (the ratio of the three is approximately 75%, 20% and 5%).
Almost all foreign flexible packaging printing, all pre-printed corrugated cardboard, most of the label flexo are using satellite flexo presses, folding cartons flexo presses are increasingly using satellite structure; corrugated box printing and some label printing Unit-type structure; only a few special products flexo presses use a stacked structure. In China, the use of machine-type flexographic printing presses (both domestic and imported) is very basic, and only a handful of imported equipment (less than 3% of the total number of Sangyinji) can be counted as satellites. This is the opposite of the situation abroad.
The advantages of flexographic printing are, to a considerable extent, associated with satellite flexo presses. The main advantage of the satellite type relative to the unit type is: Because the material band is tightly wrapped on the center impression cylinder, the tension is very stable, and an automatic register control system may not be used; the structure is relatively simple; the distance between the imprinting points is short, Easy to register quality. Therefore, under certain conditions, satellites are the best structure.
B. The number of color groups. We have all noticed that multi-colorization is an important trend, especially in the field of flexible packaging. This is a favorable factor for the development of the group printing press. At present, satellite type flexo presses generally have 4, 6, and 8 colors. When the color group exceeds 8 colors, the manufacturing difficulty and cost will increase significantly. And the increase/decrease of the color group must be 2 units. In the World Expo, only a few manufacturers can produce 10-color machines. The majority of gravure printers are 8-11 colors, and increasing the number of color groups is almost unlimited, and increasing color groups does not result in a significant increase in cost. Therefore, the gravure printing machine is more flexible in adapting to multi-colorization.
C. Manufacturer size. At present, in view of the international market, the production unit of the unit type flexographic press is generally smaller in scale, and the manufacturers of gravure printing machines and satellite type flexographic printing presses are larger, mainly because of the scale (width, speed) and technical content of the equipment. Big difference.
D. Plate material. Flexographic technology depends to a large extent on the availability of media. There are well-known manufacturers in the United States and Europe, so the promotion of this technology has favorable conditions. In China, 90% of the flexo printing plate is currently imported, which will affect the promotion of flexographic printing technology to a considerable extent.
4. quality
The printing quality mainly includes the following indicators: the number of screens, the amount of ink applied to the ink, the accuracy of overprinting, and control factors for printing quality.
A. Number of screens: The number of screens per cm or per inch (LPC or LPI) is an important parameter to measure the quality of the print. Gravure printing can reach 70 lines/cm (175 lines/inch), while general flexo printing can only reach 48 lines/cm (120 lines/inch). High quality level flexographic printing up to 52-60 lines/cm (133-150 lines/inch).
B. Ink amount: In the normal printing, the ink amount of concave, soft, offset printing is: gravure: 4-8g/m2; flexo: 3-5g/m2, or 0.8-2g/m2(UV); Offset: 1-2g/m2. The proportions of gravure, flexo, and offset printing on average are: 400%, 267%, and 100%. As a result, gravure prints achieve maximum brightness.
C. Overprint accuracy: As with the gravure printing machine of the unit type, the satellite type flexo printing machine can obtain the overprint accuracy (color-color) of ±0.1mm, but the unit type flexo press is generally difficult to obtain such accuracy, generally ± (0. 2-0.5) mm.
D. Quality Control Difficulty: Gravure printing is a relatively simple process, and its variable factors are few. Therefore, the quality control is simple and the repeatability is high. There are many factors in the flexo and Chinese films, and the possibility of problems is greater. The quality of flexographic printing depends on elements such as color separation, negative film, four-plate exposure, print mounting (mounting the plate on the roller), tape thickness and quality. The quality of all these elements has been improving all the time, making the gap between the flexo and gravure quality decreasing. Flexographic imaging using laser imaging has eliminated one of the above production processes (negative film production). When using laser imaging, a clearer image is obtained: 1% dots and 60 lines/cm (150 lines/inch) are achievable. Laser engraving can use rotary platemaking equipment to create a simple flexo, which also facilitates quality control.
5. Investment and costs
One of the major advantages of flexographic printing is its low investment and low cost. However, it must be pointed out that at present, many articles in China compare the gravure and flexo printing equipment, and think that flexographic equipment is 1/4 and 1/3 of the price of gravure printing equipment. This conclusion is overstated.
A. Equipment investment. In some cases, flexo and gravure printing equipment prices can be compared, but in more cases, the comparison between the two is meaningless. Even the same flexo printing press may not be comparable: China's imported narrow flexo press has some prices of 500,000 US dollars left, while other prices are about 80-100 million US dollars. The difference between the two is 60-100%. Why is there such a big gap? The main reason is that manufacturers are different, configuration and technical specifications are different. In addition, there will be a certain gap between the prices of equipment manufactured at different times. Therefore, a reasonable and reliable comparison is that technical specifications, manufacturers, and manufacturing periods are the same, that is, quality and efficiency are the same. This is also true of Liu Yinji.
Manufacturers that can provide both gravure and flexo presses are increasing. According to research data from several well-known international manufacturers: In the past, the cost of a flexographic printing press was only 50% of a good gravure printing press. However, gravure and flexo printing have been constantly changing since the 1980s, and the gap between them has continued to shrink. The improvement of the flexographic printing press mainly includes: embossing the cylinder, wall plate, temperature control, transmission system, tension air system, printing unit rigidity, independent transmission and so on. However, this progress has also paid a corresponding price. In short, the fact is that in comparable conditions:
a. Unit-type gravure printing machine is 20-25% higher than the price of satellite type flexo printing machine:
b. The price difference between the unit type gravure printing machine and the unit type flexo printing press is less than the above value.
B. Platemaking cycle and costs. Flexo has the most obvious advantages in this respect. Flexo can respond faster to the cloth than gravure; the production cost of gravure can be up to 2 times higher than that of flexo. In addition, there is a need to invest in the space needed to store the plates. With gravure printing
1. Trends of Foreign Leading Vendors
We should note some of the simplest facts:
A. Gravure and flexo are not new printing processes. Although flexo printing was really valued in China in recent years, it has experienced many years of development as gravure.
B. More and more manufacturing facilities in the world can produce both types of equipment simultaneously. The development of the international colonel's well-known manufacturers has two different types of situations: one is the original gravure machine manufacturer, and later increased the production capacity of flexo presses through acquisitions and holdings; another type of flexo press manufacturer, later Increase the production of gravure printing machines. Companies such as Cerutti, Valmet Rotomec, and Bobst belong to the former category, and companies such as W&H and UTECO belong to the latter category.
C. From the point of view of the printing and processing manufacturers, many well-known foreign printing manufacturers have conducted research on these two types of investment and made corresponding investments. Both have installed flexo and gravure printing equipment to provide customers with a variety of possibilities. .
In short, internationally, these two technologies are increasingly inclined to adopt a more just and tolerant attitude. But the opinions we hear about are often from the perspective of a certain type of equipment or material (plate, ink) manufacturers, often with a certain degree of bias.
2. Application areas and key product directions
The main application areas of gravure and flexographic printing are roughly the same, but not exactly the same. In the fields of packaging and trademark printing, publishing and printing, decorative printing (grain paper and transfer printing) and other special printing (such as banknotes, stamps, lottery and other securities), the advantages of gravure printing and flexo printing are different.
A. Packaging and trademark printing. This is the main competition area for gravure and flexo printing. The main application products of the flexo are corrugated cardboard, labels, flexible packaging and folding cartons.
a. Corrugated cardboard (post-printing and pre-printing): The printing of corrugated cardboard is more than 85-98% of the foreign countries. The four versions of the flexible version are used. There is not much difference between Gangzhou and the United States. The smallest difference in all packaging products. The situation in our country is very different: offset printing still occupies a considerable share, and flexo printing has not become the dominant technology. However, in this area, the competition between flexo printing and offset printing is mainly. Judging from various factors, this area should be one of the most promising applications for the development of flexo printing in China. The current difficulties are: China's large number of corrugated boxes printing manufacturers, the average size is small, the overall investment ability is not strong, so the pace of technological upgrading is slow. In the United States, the largest market share of packaging is corrugated cardboard and cartons, so the proportion of flexographic printing is larger in the whole printing process.
b. Labels: Label printing is a fairly large industry in many developed countries, and the use of flexographic printing is 85-95%. In China, labels, especially sticker printing, have developed rapidly in recent years, but the overall scale is still small. There should be considerable room for development in this industry, and the promotion of flexographic printing can also be expected to develop greatly.
c. Flexible packaging: Flexible packaging is one of the main branches of packaging, and it is also the industry that has the most disputes in terms of flexibility and intaglio in the world and has the greatest development differences. In this area, the United States uses a flexo version of about 70-80%, Europe, 35-40%, Asia (including Japan, South Korea, etc.) this ratio is between 5-8%, while China's this ratio is even lower. The biggest problem in the promotion of flexographic technology in our country is estimated in the flexible packaging field. At present, the main difficulties are concentrated on: some attempts in the early stage did not achieve the desired results; understanding of the degree of acceptance and control of the flexographic printing quality; equipment (satellite) and the cost of media; technical support environment.
d. Folding tray:
Although the proportion of the carton used for flexographic printing varies from country to country, there is not much difference: 30-40% in the United States and 10% in Europe. It can be seen that among the four types of packaging mentioned above, the proportion of flexographic printing in carton printing may be the lowest. In fact, in the field of folding cartons, there are many ways of competition for glue, soft, gravure. However, in our country, the narrow-width unit type flexo presses introduced mainly aim at this field, and the gap between the actual effect and the expected value is indeed not small.
B. Publishing and printing. Gravure and flexo printing are used in two main areas of publishing: newspapers, periodical printing. In the printing of newspapers, the flexographic version has been used in the United States and Europe at a ratio of about 20-38%. The gravure is mainly used for the printing of newspaper supplements; the gravure is an important printing method for high-grade, high-volume publications and samples in the United States and Europe. They are actually competing with offset printing.
C. Other printing. Woodgrain printing is a very fast growing industry in the world in recent years. Gravure printing is used in this area, using solvent-based and water-based inks, and the proportion of water-based inks is increasing rapidly. Since woodgrain printing is often used in the first unit and requires very fine levels (since ESA static-assisted ink removal system is used), the length of the graphic (1500-1900mm) is large, it is not used. Other printing methods. For similar reasons, transfer printing is also basically a gravure market. All the products that require higher security performance (especially valuable securities) have increasingly adopted combination brushes at home and abroad in recent years, but the main technology is still gravure.
3. About equipment and materials
A. Structure type. The gravure printing machine adopts the unit type structure, and the situation at home and abroad is basically the same; but from the overseas situation, most of the flexographic printing presses are of the satellite type, and the unit type and the stacking type only occupy a very small proportion (the ratio of the three is approximately 75%, 20% and 5%).
Almost all foreign flexible packaging printing, all pre-printed corrugated cardboard, most of the label flexo are using satellite flexo presses, folding cartons flexo presses are increasingly using satellite structure; corrugated box printing and some label printing Unit-type structure; only a few special products flexo presses use a stacked structure. In China, the use of machine-type flexographic printing presses (both domestic and imported) is very basic, and only a handful of imported equipment (less than 3% of the total number of Sangyinji) can be counted as satellites. This is the opposite of the situation abroad.
The advantages of flexographic printing are, to a considerable extent, associated with satellite flexo presses. The main advantage of the satellite type relative to the unit type is: Because the material band is tightly wrapped on the center impression cylinder, the tension is very stable, and an automatic register control system may not be used; the structure is relatively simple; the distance between the imprinting points is short, Easy to register quality. Therefore, under certain conditions, satellites are the best structure.
B. The number of color groups. We have all noticed that multi-colorization is an important trend, especially in the field of flexible packaging. This is a favorable factor for the development of the group printing press. At present, satellite type flexo presses generally have 4, 6, and 8 colors. When the color group exceeds 8 colors, the manufacturing difficulty and cost will increase significantly. And the increase/decrease of the color group must be 2 units. In the World Expo, only a few manufacturers can produce 10-color machines. The majority of gravure printers are 8-11 colors, and increasing the number of color groups is almost unlimited, and increasing color groups does not result in a significant increase in cost. Therefore, the gravure printing machine is more flexible in adapting to multi-colorization.
C. Manufacturer size. At present, in view of the international market, the production unit of the unit type flexographic press is generally smaller in scale, and the manufacturers of gravure printing machines and satellite type flexographic printing presses are larger, mainly because of the scale (width, speed) and technical content of the equipment. Big difference.
D. Plate material. Flexographic technology depends to a large extent on the availability of media. There are well-known manufacturers in the United States and Europe, so the promotion of this technology has favorable conditions. In China, 90% of the flexo printing plate is currently imported, which will affect the promotion of flexographic printing technology to a considerable extent.
4. quality
The printing quality mainly includes the following indicators: the number of screens, the amount of ink applied to the ink, the accuracy of overprinting, and control factors for printing quality.
A. Number of screens: The number of screens per cm or per inch (LPC or LPI) is an important parameter to measure the quality of the print. Gravure printing can reach 70 lines/cm (175 lines/inch), while general flexo printing can only reach 48 lines/cm (120 lines/inch). High quality level flexographic printing up to 52-60 lines/cm (133-150 lines/inch).
B. Ink amount: In the normal printing, the ink amount of concave, soft, offset printing is: gravure: 4-8g/m2; flexo: 3-5g/m2, or 0.8-2g/m2(UV); Offset: 1-2g/m2. The proportions of gravure, flexo, and offset printing on average are: 400%, 267%, and 100%. As a result, gravure prints achieve maximum brightness.
C. Overprint accuracy: As with the gravure printing machine of the unit type, the satellite type flexo printing machine can obtain the overprint accuracy (color-color) of ±0.1mm, but the unit type flexo press is generally difficult to obtain such accuracy, generally ± (0. 2-0.5) mm.
D. Quality Control Difficulty: Gravure printing is a relatively simple process, and its variable factors are few. Therefore, the quality control is simple and the repeatability is high. There are many factors in the flexo and Chinese films, and the possibility of problems is greater. The quality of flexographic printing depends on elements such as color separation, negative film, four-plate exposure, print mounting (mounting the plate on the roller), tape thickness and quality. The quality of all these elements has been improving all the time, making the gap between the flexo and gravure quality decreasing. Flexographic imaging using laser imaging has eliminated one of the above production processes (negative film production). When using laser imaging, a clearer image is obtained: 1% dots and 60 lines/cm (150 lines/inch) are achievable. Laser engraving can use rotary platemaking equipment to create a simple flexo, which also facilitates quality control.
5. Investment and costs
One of the major advantages of flexographic printing is its low investment and low cost. However, it must be pointed out that at present, many articles in China compare the gravure and flexo printing equipment, and think that flexographic equipment is 1/4 and 1/3 of the price of gravure printing equipment. This conclusion is overstated.
A. Equipment investment. In some cases, flexo and gravure printing equipment prices can be compared, but in more cases, the comparison between the two is meaningless. Even the same flexo printing press may not be comparable: China's imported narrow flexo press has some prices of 500,000 US dollars left, while other prices are about 80-100 million US dollars. The difference between the two is 60-100%. Why is there such a big gap? The main reason is that manufacturers are different, configuration and technical specifications are different. In addition, there will be a certain gap between the prices of equipment manufactured at different times. Therefore, a reasonable and reliable comparison is that technical specifications, manufacturers, and manufacturing periods are the same, that is, quality and efficiency are the same. This is also true of Liu Yinji.
Manufacturers that can provide both gravure and flexo presses are increasing. According to research data from several well-known international manufacturers: In the past, the cost of a flexographic printing press was only 50% of a good gravure printing press. However, gravure and flexo printing have been constantly changing since the 1980s, and the gap between them has continued to shrink. The improvement of the flexographic printing press mainly includes: embossing the cylinder, wall plate, temperature control, transmission system, tension air system, printing unit rigidity, independent transmission and so on. However, this progress has also paid a corresponding price. In short, the fact is that in comparable conditions:
a. Unit-type gravure printing machine is 20-25% higher than the price of satellite type flexo printing machine:
b. The price difference between the unit type gravure printing machine and the unit type flexo printing press is less than the above value.
B. Platemaking cycle and costs. Flexo has the most obvious advantages in this respect. Flexo can respond faster to the cloth than gravure; the production cost of gravure can be up to 2 times higher than that of flexo. In addition, there is a need to invest in the space needed to store the plates. With gravure printing
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