Innovative ways of printing in small batches of stickers

Nowadays, large-volume adhesive label printing is mainly based on letterpress and flexo printing. However, the demand for personalized small-batch adhesive labels on the market is increasing. Tens of thousands of small labels are combined into six. Open, eight open sheets of paper, only a few thousand, a few hundred copies, web label printers will not be able to print this job.

From the perspective of printed products, small batches of live jobs require low costs and short delivery times; while product quality often requires bright colors, and the layout of the network consists mostly of hierarchical layouts. According to this situation, many small-scale printing companies adopt a six-color monochrome offset press for four-color overprinting, which has also achieved very good results. Taken together, there are the following advantages.

1. Reduce printing costs

In the offset, emboss, gravure and other printing, offset printing is undoubtedly the lowest cost printing method. In the pre-press process, compared to the complicated plate making process of the flexographic plate, the PS plate making, filming, and printing process are very familiar with the printing plant. From a technical point of view, printing companies have turned to offset printing after phase-out. Therefore, there is no additional burden.

If a reel sticker printing machine is used, there will be a loss of more than ten meters of paper when the machine is turned on. If the overprint adjustment is not good, and the machine-type printing machine has a long paper feeding path, it will be more wasteful. Offset presses can be used with other paper to save offset paper materials.

Comparing offset and flexo plates, offset printing plates are very inexpensive and do not require much auxiliary material. When printing different thicknesses of paper, the printing pressure can be adjusted at will. In terms of operations, offset printing technicians (leaders) are also easy to hire, and the technical threshold is not high.

The practice of the printing factory has proved that the cost of printing a small sticker with an offset printing press can be reduced to "minutes." If it is for processing, even if profits are calculated using "PCT" or "millet", profits are available.

2. Guaranteed printing quality

Unlike self-adhesive labels in Japan and other countries, China's self-adhesive labels are mostly rich in graphic arts, especially small-volume labels, which often require bright colors. Offset printing has advantages in dot printing, and on-site printing is not inferior. If you need to increase the thickness of ink, you can use the advantage of overprinting to perform secondary printing. Because it is a small batch print, time can be completely guaranteed.

In addition, the use of offset fast-drying ink, adding desiccant in the ink, printing powder after the printing method, but also can effectively solve the problem of stained prints and improve the printing speed.

3. Shorten the printing cycle

Short print job printing emphasizes timeliness. If the previous plate making process is complicated and the plate making cycle is long, it will inevitably affect the commencing period. The offset platemaking cycle is short, and it is suitable for short-lived label printing where the pattern is complex and the timeliness is strong.

Of course, there are certain difficulties in printing adhesive materials with offset printing. There are two main points:

1) In the market, self-adhesive materials are currently sold in reel fashion and printed on a sheet-fed offset press, which must be changed to flat sheet paper. If the printing factory makes its own decision, it will take time and effort. In this regard, the supplier of adhesive materials is required to assist. In addition, the self-adhesive paper that has just been modified is in a curled shape and needs to be flattened. After being flattened for a long period of time, the paper must be processed before printing.

2) The offset printing press does not have a die-cutting unit. The printed sticker sheet is not a finished product. It must be processed by a die-cutting machine. Die-cutting molding, such as elliptical, triangular or other special-shaped label finished products, takes more than one process. Working hours.

There are many successful cases of printing small-lot stickers on a six-color monochrome machine. Such as a factory in Wenzhou Cangnan, the use of a Granville Wai Wai Tin WH6 six open monochrome machine, a class can print 3 to 4 batches of about 1000 four-color stickers. According to the processing fee of 60 yuan per color (minimum wage), the profit per shift is equal to 3 batches/day x 60 yuan/color x 4 = 720 yuan/day. If the source of living is sufficient, the monthly gross profit can reach more than 20,000 yuan.

However, according to experience, the author suggested that the printing equipment be used only for the quantity, and select the appropriate equipment to print the corresponding product.

Source: Shenzhen self-adhesive web