Will you fall in love with the hybrid printing process?

In recent years, printing companies have found a lot of technologies that can replace flexographic printing. Particularly in the label market, we have seen many screen printing units installed on flexographic presses. There are also some printers who choose to use a screen printer for production in order to enhance the print quality or increase the thickness of the ink film. Recently, equipment manufacturers have also developed equipment that integrates offset and gravure units.

Why should we combine other processes with flexographic printing? This depends mainly on the type of job and the needs of the customer. Flexographic printing plants may have to ask this question: What are the quality requirements of the job? What type of material do we need to process? And how much are customers willing to pay for our services? (For example, transparencies, pressure-sensitive substrates, heat-shrink sleeves, etc.) Other factors to consider include: the number of prints, the frequency of orders, and a series of follow-up questions that may increase or decrease the effectiveness of mixed printing.

Make up for the lack of flexo

When customers need both high-quality four-color printing and pattern detail reproduction, we need to combine offset printing with flexographic printing. Offset printing has already found its own market, such as wine and liquor brewing companies, whose trademarks are all made of hardcover paper, and the various colors of offset inks are transferred under pressure to the substrates through blankets. of.

Now, there have been numerous discussions centering on offset printing technology and its development potential in the field of labels and packaging, and this trend will continue to be maintained. This is mainly because the emergence of non-shaft drive has created conditions for the combination of offset printing and other printing processes. It not only ensures the consistency of the printing tension, but also maintains a certain level of accuracy. In addition, the decrease in the cost of offset printing and the close proximity of high-end flexo printing presses and web offset presses have also contributed to this trend. Each printing process has different advantages and disadvantages. When we choose the printing process, we should consider the following points:

The advantages of offset printing:

* Offset printing plates cost less than flexo printing plates, and the plate making process is relatively simple - we do not need to store printing plates.
* Offset prepress processing is relatively simple and more predictable than flexo.
* Offset can produce finer details - it is easier to produce jobs than flexo on the day of the job.
* The process of offset printing has been simplified and the cost has decreased.
* Offset printing is better than flexo printing in different color registrations.
* Offset can produce PMS (Pantoon Color Matching System) colors - it allows us to print in fewer colors, thereby reducing overall production costs.
* Offset does not appear to have problems such as sticking and creping that often occur during flexo printing.
* In many markets that pursue high quality printing, offset printing is highly competitive.

Disadvantages of offset printing:

* Offset printing requires operators to have a higher level of technology. * In the mixed printing process, offset printing will be more complicated.
* The overall investment level of offset printing is relatively high and electronic control systems are required to ensure the quality of the printing.
* Offset change is more difficult and it is time and money consuming.
* Offset printing is a different ink technology than flexographic printing.
* The ink-water balance control not only requires the operator to have a relatively high technical level, but also requires a large amount of investment in electronic equipment.
* The printing of ink in the field is not the strong point of offset printing.

The challenge of offset printing for flexo printing can be discussed later. The purpose of this article is not to evaluate which process is better, but to make all of my colleagues aware of the improvement in quality and consistency of flexo printing. The importance of Flexo printing plants must be based on quality and continuously improve the consistency and repeatability of printing. Only in this way will more end users choose flexographic technology.

Each year, the FTA's judging panel conducts research and comparisons on the fine labels, folding cartons, and flexible packaging products that participated in the selection. Each year, products are eliminated because of overprinting and other quality issues. Believe it or not, many problems such as block-blocking and rumbling on flexographic presses have not attracted enough attention.

Joint gravure

Gravure also found opportunities to work with narrow flexo printing presses (and of course, wide flexographic printing presses), which together can print opaque white (first or last color) for the job. Gravure presses are often used to print solvent-based metallic inks to achieve flash effects. People are more inclined to use gravure printing machines in the production of printed electronics because of its good consistency and repeatability. In addition, since a large amount of ink can be evenly covered on a substrate, an intaglio printing press is often used by people for pressure sealing and coating.
For long-lived, gravure is the most ideal choice for people.

Mixed costs

Since the price of the rotary screen printing unit is still within the range that we can afford, we will use it and a brand new 16-inch-wide 9-color label printer as an example to analyze the cost of hybrid printing. Assuming the price of this new UV flexo press is $1 million, the cost of adding a servo-driven screen printing unit can account for approximately 6% to 7% of the total cost of the press. If the embedded screen printing unit can serve you, then its cost will be between 5% and 6% of the total cost of the press. If you use a flexographic printer for UV coating, you can cure the screen-printing ink with the UV light from the flexo unit. Of course, the cost we calculated does not include screen-making equipment. Platemaking costs and actual screen cost are generally different depending on the supplier.

In order to promote the combination of UV flexographic printing and UV rotary screen printing technologies in the label market, many printer manufacturers have considered rotary screen printing units as part of their flexographic press structure. Each flexo position on the press can be screen-printed, so people no longer need to add special rotary screen printing units to the press. This greatly reduces the cost of adding two or more silk screen units to labels and packaging printers.

We can use an eight-color UV flexographic printing press as an example. If eight units of this press can be screen printed, the overall cost of this flexographic printing line will increase by 10%. It takes a minimum of five minutes to complete screen printing to flexo printing on these presses, and most label printers are now printing faster than anyone else.

Over the past few years, there has been a significant drop in the cost of adding offset printing units for flexo printing machines (widths between 13 and 20 inches). The manufacturers of flexo hybrid presses, together with changes in the international monetary system (US dollar vs. Euro), have pushed up the price of new high-end flexo presses. These printing platforms generally use offset printing to a different extent (including screen printing, foil stamping, gravure printing, and other printing technologies that you can think of), and add five offset printings compared to an ordinary UV flexographic printing press. The unit will increase the total cost of the equipment by 20% to 30%.
The cost of adding a gravure printing unit depends mainly on the attitude of the printing press manufacturer (for example: Can this gravure printing unit change position on the printing press? Does it have to be installed in a fixed position? It must be interchangeable How do printed pages dry? How should solvent inks be handled?) Of course, all these issues are related to how the carton maker is going to use the gravure printing unit on their hybrid printing line. I dare to say that a simple gravure unit is likely to become the most expensive part of a hybrid printing line. Therefore, before taking action, you must check if your choice is correct and play a good business sense.

Problems and Pitfalls

Mixed printing is not for everyone! Folding carton processing plants need to conduct self-inspection and evaluate their own production capacity and talents. If you plan to add a second printing process to your existing presses, check the solutions and OEM solutions for the press manufacturing to see if they meet your requirements. Be sure to seek truth from yourself. If you add a brand new screen printing unit to an old-fashioned flexo press, do you think it makes sense?

The following are some of the pitfalls that flexo printing plants can easily fall into:

* Think of themselves or the press supplier's persuasions that the hybrid printing process is easy to implement. The key question is: Will your customers fall in love with you in the early morning?
* The introduction of printing equipment or related support equipment requires the printing plant to invest a lot of money.
* Prepress work for hybrid printing is more complicated and costly.
* The printing presses and related support equipment require a high level of skill for the operators.
* The maintenance cost of printing presses and related equipment is high, and it also requires the operator to have a higher level of technology.
* Need to hire more staff to participate in the mixed printing process.
* When competing with different ink technologies, operators still need to have a higher level of technology.
* To want employees to understand the benefits of hybrid presses and sell more value-added products, they must be given additional training.
* Even if your only hybrid printer is too busy, you cannot transfer jobs to other non-hybrid printers.
* If there is no proper support program, then the time for the special job of the job will be extended.
* If you are always trying to do a lot of things and every thing is not doing well, then the customer will be disappointed with you.

Don't take it for granted that your own presses will be suitable for adding another kind of printing process. Before taking action, we must carefully consider. If you think that some jobs really need to be produced by mixed printing, it is best to develop a set of specifications based on customer requirements.
Let your marketing and sales staff, designers, printing and production personnel participate in the process of becoming familiar with the new process as soon as possible. Perhaps you have the money to buy an aircraft, but your staff may not have the ability and confidence to put it Drive to heaven. By the way, is your sales person really willing to fly?

All questions need answers. If your partner can't give the answer on your purchase press, then you don't expect them to answer these questions later. Nothing can replace experience in the mixed printing process. You have to work hard and understand that learning a new technology always takes a lot of time and money. Once you have gone through this process and enjoyed the fun brought by the new technology, then you can go back and say: "In the end, my customers fell in love with me in the morning."

Is there any other choice?

Don't go head to head, if you find a proper production process, you must concentrate on doing it well. After all, you are not a panacea. Learn to accept the fact that if there is not enough manpower and financial resources, everything will not change so quickly.