Sheet-fed gravure printing technology for high-grade cigarette packs

In recent years, China's cigarette packet printing technology has taken the lead in the world, especially in high-grade cigarette pack printing, and the exquisite use of various printing processes is surprising. In a variety of printing processes, sheet-foil gravure printing technology (hereinafter referred to as single-concave technology) is highly praised by cigarette pack printing companies for its unique technical charm.

Application of Single Concave Technology in Combination Printing Process

At present, the commonly used printing methods include offset printing, gravure printing, screen printing, and flexographic printing. Each process has its advantages and disadvantages. In the high-end cigarette pack design and printing process, in order to achieve more perfect results, process designers often consider using more than two kinds of printing technology to complement each other in order to achieve the desired process design goals. For example, the use of offset printing technology to achieve the level of exquisite image, the use of gravure printing technology to complete the printing of a large area of ​​the actual part, through the combination of the two processes to achieve the unique appearance of the printed matter and visual impact. In addition, a single-concave machine can be considered instead of a web gravure printer, which is flexible and perfectly combined with other printing methods. Therefore, in the process design of cigarette packets, the flexible application of single-concave technology and other printing technologies makes the design of cigarette packets. Even more powerful.

Single concave technology can achieve special effects

With the increasing perfection of laser engraving and gravure technology, many special effects that could only be achieved using screen printing technology have been perfectly reflected on single-convex machines.

(1) Refraction effect

A few years ago, the refraction effect could only be demonstrated by screen printing technology, because the reproduction of the refraction effect needs to be achieved by a significant change in the thickness of the ink layer. Screen printing ink thickness can reach 60μm or more, can meet the requirements of refractive index; and other printing methods of the ink layer thickness are thinner, such as gravure ink layer thickness of screen printing 1/4, offset ink layer thickness for screen printing 1/6. However, the use of screen printing and refraction technology has seriously affected the overall production speed of cigarette packs, which cannot be ignored. The birth of single-concave folding technology has completely solved this problem. For example, the mellow Oriental red cigarette packs printed by our company have been successfully used. This technology.

(2) Color change effect

Photochromic ink is a major breakthrough in ink technology in recent years. It uses nanotechnology to process ink, making the ink show different colors at different angles. This technology has been widely used in high-grade cigarette pack printing, greatly improving the grade and exquisiteness of cigarette packs. However, in order to realize the discoloration effect of the ink, the ink needs to have a certain degree of solidity. The screen printing process has become the first process technology to achieve the ink discoloration effect with its absolute advantage in ink layer thickness. However, in actual use, it also exposed many drawbacks, such as the unclear outline of the pattern after printing, and the underprinting accuracy is not high. In order to solve this problem, our company's craftsmen researched and tested the ink technology and the plate making technology, and finally the single concave technology proved to be a good choice. At present, this technology has been successfully applied to "Furong Wang" soft packs, "Xinyang" soft packs and other cigarette pack products.

Single-convex technology to achieve the advantages of special effects

(1) The production speed is greatly increased

In order to guarantee the appearance and quality of high-grade cigarette packs, the speed of screen printing is often only about 1600 sheets/hour. On the premise of guaranteeing the same quality, the speed of single-convex machines can generally reach about 5000 sheets/hour. The screen printing speed is more than 3 times, which solves the problem of slow screen printing process. In addition, due to the thick ink layer and the slow drying speed, screen printing usually requires a paper treatment. This also lengthens the production cycle of the product, and requires a lot of space to store the semi-finished products to ensure that they are fully dried. The single-concave technology can be avoided. these questions.

(2) The outline of the cigarette pack pattern is clearly clear

As we all know, the screen is made of screen. After the screen is printed for a long time, its size will change, and the outline of the pattern will be blurred due to long-time printing, which will seriously affect the appearance quality of the cigarette pack. The chrome plating treatment has a relatively high hardness, so the single-concave technology has no problem of pattern distortion or unclear contours, and the appearance quality of the printed matter is greatly improved.

(3) The quality level of cigarette packs is improved and the difficulty of production control is reduced

The single-concave technology eliminates the paper handling process, the paper has small deformation and good stability, and lays a good foundation for post-processing. Therefore, the deformation of the paper is effectively controlled from the process, the dimensional stability of the semi-finished product is high, and the subsequent processing sets Quasi-precision is guaranteed, and high-quality cigarette packs can be obtained in the end, eliminating the negative impact of cigarette pack quality problems on cigarette brands and maintaining the image of cigarette brands. The cigarette packs produced using single-concave technology are easier to control afterwards, which greatly reduces the labor intensity of employees.

It is believed that in the near future, through continuous exploration and research of single-concave technology by craftsmen, single-concave technology will be more attractive with its outstanding performance in the presentation of special effects.