Advantages and application of the hottest offset c

Advantages and applications of offset combined printing

offset printing occupies a dominant position in the field of publishing printing and commercial printing. At present, it is difficult to shake other printing methods, not only because offset printing technology has a long history, has developed relatively mature, production standards, quality assurance, but also the operation level of workers has reached a high average value; More importantly, offset printing products are of high quality, which can meet the replication requirements of most products, and offset printing technology has high flexibility, which is applicable to medium, long and short editions. It is these advantages of offset printing that enable offset printing to display its talents in the field of packaging and printing

offset printing remains popular in the packaging printing market. Another important factor is the flexible combination of offset printing and other printing methods - offset + sheet fed gravure printing, offset + silk printing, offset + gold scanning, etc. Developing strengths and avoiding weaknesses and complementing each other's advantages not only enable people who love offset printing to find more reasons to love it, but also provide more means to highlight their personality for packaging users who are keen to pursue the new and seek differences. With the acceleration of people's pace of life and the improvement of living standards, the requirements for commodity packaging are also constantly improving. A large number of new products are emerging, and the pace of product renewal is also greatly accelerated. This means that people will have higher and higher requirements for the exquisite degree of packaging and the quality of packaging and printing, and the variety of packaging will be greatly increased, while the batch size will not change much or even decrease

this trend requires flexible high-quality printing methods to adapt to it. In other words, the market needs a printing process that has a short production cycle and can print exquisite color images. For this, offset printing is not only a good choice, but also an inevitable choice in many occasions. Especially in China, offset printing has become very popular, and the quality of offset printing has become the default standard of many packaging users and consumers; Moreover, there are a large number of offset printing machines, which have a good hardware environment (equipment wood plastic industry is bound to usher in a wave of price war, supplies, spare parts supply...) and software conditions (technical personnel, maintenance...). It can be said that the development of China's packaging and printing market is inseparable from offset printing, both from the perspective of the seller's resource utilization and from the perspective of the buyer's demand. This is also confirmed by the large number of imported multi-color offset printing machines in recent years. According to several major offset machine suppliers in the world, most of the sheet fed multi-color offset machines introduced in China in recent years are used for packaging and printing. Especially in the Pearl River Delta and Yangtze River Delta, although many large and medium-sized packaging and printing enterprises have introduced web gravure printing machines and flexographic printing machines, offset printing is still one of the main projects, or used to print small and medium-sized batch packaging products, or combined with other printing and finishing processes to print boutique packaging

the reproduction ability of offset printing on fine levels of image is amazing, especially the transition of gradient color is very soft and smooth, which is unmatched by any other printing method. However, the offset ink layer is relatively thin, and there are still problems of ink balance and ink emulsification. Therefore, it is difficult to achieve full, uniform and consistent ink color even if it is printed twice in the field. In packaging design, the application of field color blocks and spot colors is very common. In order to make their products different, many packaging users usually use four-color printing plus spot color printing, and need to print gold ink, silver ink, pearlescent ink or glazing at the same time. For such packaging, if offset printing is simply used, the effect of spot color and printing gold or silver will be greatly reduced. This undoubtedly poses a problem for offset printing

in order to make up for the shortcomings of offset printing, the combined printing process of sheet fed gravure printing + offset printing has been highly respected in recent years. This combined printing process uses the advantages of thick gravure ink layer and stable ink color to print large areas of field and spot color, gold silver, pearlescent color blocks, and even produce a variety of metal like etching effects; Offset printing uses the characteristics of fine layers and smooth transition to print eye tone images and gradient patterns. The two printing methods complement each other

compared with offset press, the advantages of sheet fed gravure press are:

1 The transferred pigment is 4 times more than offset printing, the printing ink layer is thick, and the ink color is bright and full

2. There is no danger of ghosting, ink balance and ink emulsification in non wet press wet printing

3. When printing large-area color blocks, there will be no ink color change and "ghost"

4. The ink layer dries quickly, and subsequent processing can be carried out immediately after printing, which can greatly shorten the production cycle

5. There is no need to spray powder, no ink accumulation, and almost no ink color fluctuation

6. Printing materials that are difficult to print by offset press, such as vacuum aluminized paper (gold card paper, silver card paper), metal foil, etc., can be smoothly printed by single concave machine

7. Gold silver ink, fluorescent ink and pearlescent ink have good printing effect

8. It can print imitation metal etching effect

compared with the anti swing device of web gravure press, sheet fed gravure press is very suitable for printing high-quality prints in small and medium batches, and its main advantages are:

1 The printing operation is very flexible, and the pre press preparation time and version change time are short

2. The overprinting accuracy is exactly the same as that of sheet fed offset press

3. Waste is minimal. Under normal circumstances, after the adjustment of oneortwo prints, you can print normally, and there is almost no waste

4. Flexible equipment configuration and small investment

according to the statistics of sheet fed gravure printer suppliers, at present, the installed capacity of domestic sheet fed gravure printers has been about 200, and the vast majority of manufacturers have sheet fed offset printers. The purpose of their selection of sheet fed gravure printing machine is to cooperate with the existing offset printing machine to realize the combination of glue and gravure, so as to achieve high-quality and low-cost printing. At present, more than 90% of the glue concave combination process is used for high-end cigarette bag printing

silk printing is famous for its thick ink layer and full ink color. In particular, the development and application of various imitation metal etching inks have made silk printing win an important position in China's high-end paper packaging market. However, silk printing is difficult to reproduce fine images, and the production efficiency is low, and the scrap rate is relatively high

the combination of offset printing and silk printing is the preferred process for many high-end packaging, especially high-quality cigarette packs. One of the most successful practitioners of this process is Zhejiang Meinong silk printing Co., Ltd

Zhejiang Meinong silk printing Co., Ltd. is a modern large-scale joint-venture packaging and printing enterprise, mainly engaged in the packaging design and printing of medium and high-end high-quality cigarettes, pharmaceuticals and other products, with silk printing as the main feature and high-quality cigarette packs as the main business object. In addition to a number of full-automatic silk printing machines and semi-automatic silk printing machines, the company is also equipped with Heidelberg four-color offset printing machines and zhenhenry sheet fed gravure printing machines

before configuring the sheet fed gravure press, Zhejiang Meinong adopted the offset + silk printing process. On site printing relies partly on silk printing and partly on offset printing twice; Pearlescent ink and spot color ink are mainly printed by silk printing process. At the same time, special finishing effects such as frosting, ice flower and crystal are also achieved by silk printing. The purpose of large-area field printing and pearlescent printing with a silk printing machine is to obtain the thick ink color required by high-quality cigarette packs and ensure that the ink color is uniform and consistent

with the expansion of production scale, considering the efficiency and efficiency, after comparing various printing methods, they believe that gravure printing is better than offset printing in terms of color effect, but it is also easier to control the consistency of ink color, especially when printing spot color. Therefore, they purchased a sheet fed gravure printing machine, which is mainly used for field printing and pearlescent printing

because the cigarette packs they print are generally medium and high-end products, the price is relatively high, and of course, the quality requirements are relatively high, so special finishing effects such as frosting, ice flower, crystal, etc. are still achieved by silk printing at present

in addition to professional silk printing enterprises such as Zhejiang Meinong, many domestic packaging printing plants with offset printing machines are also equipped with silk printing equipment. However, due to different business volumes and process requirements, the number of silk printing equipment may be smaller, the configuration may be lower, and some may even be equipped with some simple silk printing tools. But there is no doubt that the marriage of offset printing and silk printing can create high profits for enterprises, so it is very popular and quickly popularized. Out of the preference for metal texture, people unconsciously use gold and silver when pursuing packaging grade. Therefore, a series of printing and post printing processes for manufacturing metal effects, such as anodized hot stamping, gold printing, silver printing, gold scanning, etc., were born

compared with gold and silver printing, the metal texture of gold scanning printing is much stronger, and the gloss is high, and the finishing effect is good. Moreover, due to the relatively small installed amount of gold scanning machine, gold scanning printing products have better anti-counterfeiting effect

compared with anodized hot stamping, the metallic luster of gold sweeping products is slightly inferior, but the gold sweeping machine can be connected behind the offset press, and the gold sweeping process can be completed online after printing. The sweeping method is to remove the dial glass, which has high production efficiency and low scrap rate. The delicacy of offset images and the fullness of gold scanning patterns give prints a noble and elegant style. The combination of offset printing and gold scanning technology also gives offset printing a new vitality

in addition to the above combined printing processes, offset printing can also form a variety of process schemes with various printing methods, depending on the needs of packaging prints and the enterprise's own equipment configuration, bringing more highlights to the packaging printing market

source: packaging industry