What did the printing process do for packaging creativity?

[China Packaging Network News] What is the idea? It is a gold can package launched by JDB, a personalized label printed by Coca-Cola on the packaging bottle, a package design by Nongfu Spring who has won several awards, or... I have to say, these are people Amazing creativity. However, good ideas still need to be operational.

Let the packaging ideas become physical, and ultimately the support of printing technology. The rapid development of printing technology has made the idea in the mind become a reality, not only enriching the packaging design ideas, but also bringing more personalized packaging opportunities.

Let's take a look, what kind of printing technology can be used for packaging printing?

Digital printing on packaging

Digital printing and packaging technology has been increasingly recognized by the market. Short-term printed matter has emerged in an endless stream. Personalized printed matter has become one of the effective tools that brand owners use to attract customers.

Digital printing technology can be used for brand protection, using transparent UV fluorescent toner or ink. At present, the needs of brand sellers are more biased toward creative and efficient product packaging design, which creates the conditions for the development of digital printing technology in the packaging field. Print unique barcodes on product packaging to track the entire supply chain.

Digital printing technology creates low-cost advantages and is favored by packaging products. In the next five years, the value of the market for package printing using digital printing will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 13.6%, and the market size will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 16.2%. Label digital printing accounts for 80.5% of its market value and 93.5% of market size. It is mainly used in carton, corrugated cardboard, flexible packaging, rigid plastic and metal decorative packaging, and the application rate has grown rapidly.

Packaging printing using digital printing technology is one of the few industries in the printing industry that maintains a strong momentum of growth. According to the Smithers Peel Institute, an authoritative international survey organization, the global market value of the industry this year is about 10.5 billion U.S. dollars. Nowadays, digital printing and packaging technology is constantly advancing, and technological innovation has generated a tremendous impetus in the packaging industry.

Inkjet printing in packaging

The new inkjet inks and printing materials have brought packaging power to the packaging and printing companies to cope with the short-run packaging and printing business.

Print proofs and models are quickly and economically obtained through digital printing. Digital packaging technology helps merchants to forecast sales in the regional market by producing a small amount of packaging jobs, and then consider whether to use traditional printing processes for large-scale packaging printing. Traditional printing methods are obviously costly in this short live production. The inkjet printing process is simple and the production cycle is short, and it is also possible to add and change the printing information at any time without worrying about the delivery deadline.

Inkjet printing can also achieve the possibility of printing on special media, providing technical support for the wide-format inkjet printing technology can be applied to the packaging field. For example, a soft white film package can be achieved using a solvent-based inkjet printer. In addition, solvent-based inkjet printers can also be printed directly on the shrink film, packaging model production and short-run printing, after printing, remove the film from the temporary support, cut, shrink to the packaging.

Wide-format inkjet printing technology provides package printing companies with a new, high-efficiency option, which enables rapid transfer of graphics and production and timely delivery of production, and greatly reduces costs by reducing inventory. In the near future, wide-format inkjet printing will become a mainstream technology and will be adopted by the packaging and printing industry, playing an important role in the future packaging market.

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Gravure on flexible packaging

As the technology, equipment, and materials of the gravure packaging gravure printing industry tend to be environmentally friendly, energy-efficient, and high-efficiency, more and more new technologies are being applied to the gravure packaging gravure printing industry.

Domestic gravure printing equipment manufacturers adopt the latest technologies such as rapid pre-registering and high-precision tension control, which results in cutting loss, equipment restart loss (already registered), replacement loss, resumption of previously stored order loss, and speed reduction The loss reached a fairly low level, and even surpassed the international advanced level in some aspects. Today, the advanced gravure press operation assistance time is greatly shortened.

In the gravure printing process, the energy consumed by the drying box accounts for a large proportion, and the application of the heat pump technology, the waste heat recovery system, and the layered oven effectively reduce the consumption of heat energy. The LEL-based automatic monitoring drying system saves energy and reduces emissions while also preventing the risk of explosion and combustion in the drying system, while significantly reducing the cost of tail gas treatment.

Gravure printing technology has greatly improved the efficiency of flexible packaging printing, and also promoted the green production of flexible packaging.

Flexo on flexible packaging

Flexo printing is a relatively environmentally friendly printing method. With the maturity of technology and the prevalence of environmental protection concepts, the future development of flexographic printing in the soft packaging industry will be immeasurable.

Flexographic printing uses a flexible photosensitive resin plate, raised relief text to transfer ink to the substrate, with high-resolution features. High-resolution flexographic print image resolution can reach 4000ppi2, while standard flexographic resolution is basically 2450ppi2. High-resolution flexo printing enables fuller field, better ink transfer, softer high-light transitions, better reproduction of high-quality images, and reproducibility over 150 lpi of screen lines.

Flexo printing can take smaller orders, and new flexo presses are now able to achieve orders of at least 1.5 to 20,000 impressions. High-resolution flexo enables rapid replacement of print jobs and shortens the time from design to printing. These advantages give packagers more choices, especially in the current market environment where the packaging market emphasizes personalization, regionalization, and regular promotional activities.

Another major innovation in flexo printing by the wide color gamut printer. Wide color gamut printing adopts the color printing technology, adding orange, green and purple to the standard four-color printing, using all or a combination of seven colors to express all printing images, eliminating the use of spot color ink and reproducing 1800 85% of Pantone colors. The wide color gamut printing process provides packaging designers and developers with more color choices, more complex color printing, improved image realism, more compelling product effects, and improved product and background color contrast.

Nano-printing in packaging

In the printing process of the carton, the ink material plays a decisive role in the printing quality of the product. Nanotechnology is applied to carton printing and serves the packaging and printing industry with a new type of ink.

The nanoparticles themselves have good surface wettability, and they are adsorbed on the surface of the pigment particles in the ink, so that the lipophilicity and wettability of the ink are significantly improved, and the printability of the ink can be better improved. Nano-metal particles can absorb all wavelengths of light, and they appear black, but have a scattering effect on light. Therefore, the addition of metal nanoparticles of ink has a higher purity and density. The use of high-tech to resin, pigments, fillers, etc. made of nano-scale materials, can also achieve the effect of reducing the amount of pigment and ink hiding power does not decrease. If added to the uv ink, it can also speed up the curing speed, effectively avoid shrinkage and wrinkling defects of the ink film.

In addition, the surface of semiconductor nanoparticles is chemically modified and added to yellow and cyan inks to make nano inks, which can increase the purity of yellow ink and cyan ink, make the colors of prints more vivid, more abundant layers, and the level of images are subtle Significantly enhanced, and can improve the print's resistance to light and discoloration. Since various raw material components in nano inks are composed of nanoparticles, the smaller their molecular structure, the better their uniformity and fluidity, and the smaller the coefficient of friction of printing plates, which is advantageous in preventing or reducing The phenomenon of quality defects such as stencil, dirty plate, and off-page occurred during the printing process improves the printing quality of the carton products.

Printing and packaging are inseparable. It can be said that printing technology plays a decisive role in the development of the packaging industry. Printing technology can help packaging create different styles and achieve diversified development, such as traditional style, personalized packaging, packaging, creative packaging and so on. The development of the packaging industry will also drive the growth of demand for printing services. Therefore, on the road to transformation and upgrading, it is particularly important for the packaging industry and the printing industry to develop together.