Flexographic printing process has huge room for development
The process and technology of flexographic printing using photosensitive flexo has been in China for 40 to 50 years. In the past 20 years, driven by modern digital technology, network technology and fine chemical technology, the domestic flexo industry has made great progress under the guidance of advanced flexographic printing platemaking technology, printing machinery and equipment abroad. The quality of the product has entered the field of middle and high-end sales packaging and packaging from low-end carton transportation packaging printing and plastic "vest bag" printing; the product market category covers all packaging and decoration printing and paper product printing except for the book printing market. field. In recent years, with the full implementation of the WTO policy, China has become a "world's processing plant", and various products produced in China, especially the popular, practical, and consumer products, have spread all over the world in markets around the world. Restricted by environmental protection policies and trade technical barriers in developed countries, China's product exports have changed from quality-oriented to environmental protection and energy-saving. In particular, the hygiene requirements of food, medicine, children's life and education supplies are becoming more and more strict. Most of the low-cost process technologies and consumable materials commonly used in traditional packaging and printing are subject to significant restrictions. Common inks used in offset printing and gravure printing must limit the use of toxic and hazardous solvents and heavy metal components that endanger human health; chemical products that restrict the use of hazardous ingredients in the printing materials, and the production and processing sites are also The waste discharge standards are strictly controlled. Among the various ink types, the environmental protection and harmless sanitation of water-based inks and UV inks are recognized by the international packaging and printing industry. All these changes have prompted the flexographic printing process that is good at using water-based inks to develop a new track in the global economy. It has gained huge room for development.
What is the "bottleneck" of the development of the flexographic printing market?
At present, China's flexographic printing market share is steadily increasing, with an annual increase rate of more than 10%, and its share in the packaging and printing market has roughly increased to about 12%. However, due to the large transformation of China's agricultural population to the urban population, the absolute value of the consumption of commodity economy and cultural and educational undertakings has increased rapidly, and the amount of flexo printing market improvement is still lower than that of offset printing and gravure printing. In this regard, people of insight and entrepreneurs in the flexographic industry are seriously thinking and actively engaged in various market explorations. According to calculations by industry experts, the flexographic production line that uses web materials for inline printing and post-press processing has a lower overall cost in printing and post-press processing than offset and gravure printing. From the point of view of the flexographic printing machine sales market, due to the efforts of domestic equipment manufacturers, medium and low-grade flexographic printing machines (especially in the lamination type, unit type machine and narrow-width type) have shown a trend of localization, making The "threshold" for investment in printing companies has dropped significantly, resulting in the rapid expansion of the mid-to-low-end printed product market, which is establishing a broad foundation for the flexo industry to further develop upwards. However, the price of photosensitive flexo plates is too high, which limits the flexo market to medium-volume (50,000 to 100,000) and product markets with strict hygiene requirements for printed products. The cost of making flexo plates higher than offset printing is the main "bottleneck" in the development of the short flexo market. This view has become a common knowledge in the industry, and how to effectively and quickly reduce the cost of plate making has become the focus of enthusiasm in the industry.
Creatively develop low-priced domestic version, thin version and sleeve version to break through the "fence" of flexo development!
According to industry analysts, there are two reasons why the cost of flexo platemaking is higher than that of offset printing: One is the low plate-making rate in platemaking. Because the degree of data and standardization management in flexo printing in China is much lower than that of offset printing, and the variety of printing materials used in flexo printing, the printability of "paper-ink" printing is difficult to control. Therefore, the rate of rework in platemaking is relatively high, because the price of flexographic plates is already 10 times higher than that of offset plates. If the scrap rate is high, the compensation for loss must be increased in platemaking prices, which has become one of the important factors of high prices. Of course, the proportion of this part can be reduced as the level of platemaking technology improves.
The second is the high price of photosensitive flexographic plates. Compared with a few years ago, the plate-making price of the flexographic plate has dropped by 50%. Among them, the price of the plate material has fallen, especially for the low-end carton plate printing varieties. However, most of the plate materials used in China still rely on imported goods, of which import tariffs plus value-added tax account for about 25%. If the production is localized, there is room for prices to fall. Therefore, the localization of flexographic plate materials is another important factor to reduce the price of plate making.
The reason why the use of thin plates is advocated, because the thinning of the photosensitive layer reduces the consumption of photosensitive materials, which can reduce the manufacturing cost of the plates; and shorten the exposure and rinsing time in the plate making process, speed up the plate making cycle, improve labor production efficiency and reduce unit fixing cost. According to reports, when printing color newspapers with water-based inks, only metal-based photosensitive flexographic plates with a total thickness of 0.75mm are used to adapt to the timeliness of newspaper printing.
Promote the use of sleeve version. The accuracy of traditional plate mounting in flexo printing is relatively low, so the time and material loss of debugging on the machine is higher than the offset printing process using rapid plate mounting technology. If you use a sleeve plate (not necessarily a seamless plate) ) Positioning and copying will inevitably speed up the on-board copying speed and reduce the loss of paper, ink and man-hours in the adjustment. At present, sleeve-type printing plates and anilox rolls are only used on satellite wide-format models. Its production efficiency and quality are well known. If it can be extended to narrow-format machines and other models, and localized equipment is used, That is to say, it can reduce the investment threshold of the enterprise and increase the production efficiency of the flexo printing process to meet the market price needs of short-run printed parts.
The independent development of the air-cushion liner as a supporting equipment for thin plates will help improve the quality and efficiency of thin plates in carton printing.
In summary, the key to the development of flexographic printing is to increase production efficiency in the platemaking and printing process, reduce production costs, adopt and creatively develop and apply advanced new technologies and new equipment, and accelerate the localization of equipment and equipment!
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