Traditional screen printing combined with digital printing

Many years ago, precisely in 1994-1995, many people believed that the emergence of digital printing was a threat, especially for screen printing. It was a terrible threat. In 5 years, digital printing will swallow screen printing. Even Americans and Europeans believe it. Fortunately, in the face of this situation, there are also other down-to-earth and forward-thinking people, such as the European Screen Printing Association (FESPA) and the International Screen Printing Association (SGIA), the highest screen printing professional organizations, who identify and propose The best solution is to organize and integrate large-scale digital printing within their associations, and then combine digital printing in their own printing plants, so that digital printing will not be fierce in front of screen printing. competition. I remember at some international technical seminars and exchanges, including the Lyon FESPA exhibition in 1996, there were some digital printing practitioners who had done statistics, they claimed that the statistical results showed that digital printing was in other printing processes (mainly There will be breakthrough expansion in front of the screen printing site, but they have forgotten the following three points:

1. Digital printing technology will eventually reach its limit at some point or soon due to mechanical and physical limitations such as the conversion speed of the print head or the ejection speed of ink droplets;

2. They often claim that digital printing can achieve high printing speeds, but forget that their actual printing resolution is only 50dpi or 72dpi. Assuming that the quality required for printing POPs is reached, ie, 300 dpi or 600 dpi, the printing speed will be slowed by 6 to 12 times, and the speed at 600 m2/h will be 100 m2/h or even 50 m2/h. In screen printing, the quality required by our customers is 300L/inch (120L/cm), often 610dpi. We need photo-like quality. In contrast, digital printing is too slow.

3. Many printing materials used in the digital printing process must be pre-processed. After the printing is completed, special finishing processes are also required to provide mechanical and physical protection for the printed materials. These finishing processes are used The inks or colorants are very expensive, and the finishing process will increase the cost of the printed product. In addition, they also ignored the screen printing process can respond in such ways as quickly.

1). Screen printing, like offset printing and other printing processes, makes full use of the advantages of digitalization, and its prepress process quickly realizes full digitization.

2). Screen Printing Technology has developed large-format multi-color printing machines and computer-to-machine screen printing systems for graphic printing, and has comprehensively improved and improved screen printing technologies, products, equipment and productivity. As a result, in 1996, 100 copies of digital jobs were cheaper to use for digital printing. By 1990, the number of prints for digital printing was reduced to 50, and screen printing quickly recaptured a lot. Part of the lost market. The actual situation is not as optimistic as they predicted. Screen printing has reached relative stability in Europe and elsewhere in the world. For many screen printers, digital printing has become their necessary and complementary business. Digital printing has been accepted by the screen printing industry. Its existence is no longer seen as a threat, but as a meaningful opportunity. This is why our screen printing companies must enter the field of digital printing. Let us now discuss the digital printing market. For the digital printing market, my point is that some medium-sized screen printing companies or sign manufacturers, which have about 20 to 40 employees, are equipped with semi-automatic and fully automatic screen printing production lines, suitable for their choice of digital The printing technology should be a piezoelectric ink jet printer, not a thermal ink jet printer. Thermal ink jets are too limited and can only be printed on some traditional substrates. However, 50% of piezo inkjet printers use solvent ink, which causes environmental pollution.

I once suggested to a friend in Italy that it is best to purchase a platform piezo inkjet printer using advanced UV technology. This system can print on various substrates, and the prepress and postprint substrates do not need to be specially processed.

This is a major advancement in digital printing technology, and it is well adapted to the needs of screen printers so that they can provide customers with more services without any environmental pollution problems. For a small-scale screen printing factory that invests 150,000 U.S. dollars, the production operation is free from any pollution, no additional drying device is needed, and only the UV curing system is required after the printing head. You must know that operating in a super large-format (4 to 7m wide) market means that your investment must be at least $700,000. This is a conservative figure for large companies with investment potential. In this situation, you need to do a lot of commercial operations. Need to print 30m2 or more of print, for most customers only once a year, only your production business for one year, your sales staff will provide you with 200 to 300 new customers. On the contrary, if your digital technology investment is reduced to a minimum under $20,000, in this case, you can only print jobs with a width of 135cm or less, the printing speed is not fast, the quality level is in the middle, the lower, etc. However, This helps you to serve your existing or new customers. Such digital printers can only use solvent inks (unfortunately more than 50% volatiles) and use screen-printing conventional infrared dryers (IR) or jet dryers behind the digital printers. Of course, there is a problem of environmental pollution.

Reprinted from: Graphic Arts