From packaging ideas to packaging objects See what the printing process does
To turn packaging ideas into physical objects, the support of printing technology is indispensable. The rapid development of printing technology has turned the ideas in my mind into reality, which not only enriches the creativity of packaging design, but also brings more personalized packaging business opportunities.
Let's take a look, what printing technologies can be used for packaging printing?
Digital printing for packaging
Digital printing and packaging technology is becoming more and more recognized by the market, short-run prints are emerging in an endless stream, and personalized packaging prints have become one of the effective tools for brands to attract customers.
Creative and efficient product packaging design, which creates conditions for the development of digital printing technology in the field of packaging. Unique barcodes are printed on the outer packaging of the product so that the entire supply chain can be traced.
Digital printing technology creates a low-cost advantage and is favored by packaging products. In the next 5 years, the market value of packaging printing with digital printing will grow at a CAGR of 13.6%, and the market size will grow at a CAGR of 16.2%. Label digital printing accounts for 80.5% of its market value and 93.5% of its market size, mainly used in cartons, corrugated cardboard, flexible packaging, rigid plastic and metal decorative packaging, and the application rate is growing rapidly.
Packaging printing with digital printing technology is one of the few industries in the printing industry today that has maintained a rapid growth momentum. According to the Smithers Peel Institute, an authoritative international research organization, the global market value of the industry is about $10.5 billion this year. Now, digital printing packaging technology is constantly improving, and technological innovation has produced a huge impetus in the packaging industry.
Inkjet printing for packaging
The new inkjet ink and printing materials have brought the confidence to the packaging and printing enterprises to cope with the short-run packaging and printing business.
Quickly and cost-effectively obtain printed packaging samples and models with digital printing. Digital packaging technology helps merchants to forecast sales in regional markets by producing a small number of package jobs, and then consider whether to use traditional printing processes for high-volume packaging printing. Traditional printing methods are clearly costly for such short runs. Inkjet printing, on the other hand, has a simple process and short production cycle, allowing you to add and change printed information at any time without worrying about delivery deadlines.
Inkjet printing can also realize the possibility of printing on special media, which provides technical support for the application of wide-format inkjet printing technology in the field of packaging. For example, soft white film packaging can be achieved with solvent-based inkjet printers. In addition, solvent-based inkjet printers can also print directly on shrink film for packaging model making and short-run printing, and after printing, the film can be removed from the temporary support, cut and shrunk onto the package.
Wide-format inkjet printing technology provides a new and cost-effective option for packaging printing enterprises, which can achieve rapid conversion of graphics and text and timely delivery of production, and greatly save costs by reducing inventory. In the near future, wide-format inkjet printing will become a mainstream technology and be adopted by the packaging printing industry, playing an important role in the future packaging market.
Gravure printing for flexible packaging
As the technology, equipment and materials of the flexible packaging gravure industry tend to be environmentally friendly, energy-saving and efficient, more and more new technologies have begun to be applied to the flexible packaging gravure industry.
Domestic gravure equipment manufacturing enterprises use the latest technologies such as fast pre-registration and high-precision tension control, which make the cutting loss, equipment restart loss (registered), order change loss, order loss stored before restarting, and speed reduction loss reach a fairly low level, and even better than the international advanced level in some aspects. Today, the operating assistance time of the state-of-the-art gravure press is significantly reduced.
The energy consumed by the drying oven accounts for a large proportion of the gravure production process, and the application of heat pump technology, waste heat recovery system and layered oven effectively reduces the consumption of heat energy. The LEL-based automatic monitoring drying system not only saves energy and reduces emissions, but also prevents the risk of explosion and combustion in the drying system, and greatly reduces the cost of exhaust gas treatment.
The improvement of gravure printing technology has greatly improved the efficiency of flexible packaging printing and promoted the green production of flexible packaging.
Flexo printing for flexible packaging
Flexographic printing is a relatively environmentally friendly printing method, with the maturity of technology and the prevalence of environmental protection concepts, the future development of flexographic printing in the soft packaging industry will be immeasurable.
Flexographic printing uses flexible photosensitive resin printing plates, and the raised embossed graphics transfer the ink to the substrate material, which has the characteristics of high resolution. The resolution of printed images in high-resolution flexo printing can reach 4000ppi2, while the resolution of standard flexo printing is basically 2450ppi2. High-resolution flexo printing enables fuller solids, better ink transfer, softer highlight transitions, better reproduction of high-quality images, and the ability to reproduce more than 150 lpi.
Flexographic printing can undertake smaller orders, and now the new flexographic printing machines can achieve orders of at least 15~20,000 prints. High-resolution flexo printing enables fast changeovers and shortens the time from design to printing. These advantages bring more choices to packagers, especially in the current market environment where personalization, regionalization and recurring promotional activities are emphasized.
Another major innovation for wide-gamut printers in flexographic printing. Wide color gamut printing adopts the color printing process, adding orange, green and purple on the basis of standard four-color printing, using a combination of one or seven colors to express all printed images, eliminating the use of spot color ink, and can reproduce 85% of the 1800 Pantone colors. The wide color gamut printing process provides packaging designers and developers with more color options, enables more complex color printing, improves the realism of images, obtains more eye-catching product effects, and enhances the contrast between products and background colors.
Nanoprinting for packaging
In the printing process of cartons, the ink material plays a decisive role in the printing quality of the product. Nanotechnology is applied to carton printing and serves the packaging printing industry in the form of new inks.
The nanoparticles themselves have good surface wettability, and they are adsorbed on the surface of the pigment particles in the ink, which significantly improves the lipophilicity and wettability of the ink, and can better improve the printability of the ink. Nanometal particles can absorb all kinds of wavelengths of light, and they appear black on their own, but they have a scattering effect on light, so the ink with metal nanoparticles has higher purity and density. The use of high-tech resins, pigments, fillers, etc. into nano-scale materials, but also to reduce the amount of pigments without reducing the effect of ink hiding power. If it is added to UV ink, it can also speed up its curing speed and effectively avoid shrinkage and wrinkling of the ink film.
In addition, after the surface of semiconductor nanoparticles is chemically modified, it is added to yellow and cyan ink to make nano ink, which can increase the purity of yellow ink and green ink, make the color of the print more vivid, the layer is richer, the subtle layer of the image is significantly enhanced, and can improve the light resistance and anti-discoloration performance of the imprint. Because the various raw materials in nano ink are composed of nano particles, the smaller their molecular structure, the better their uniformity and fluidity, and the smaller the friction coefficient of the printing plate, which is conducive to preventing or reducing the quality failure phenomena such as pasting, dirty and dropped plates in the printing process, so as to better improve the printing quality of carton products.
Summary: Printing and packaging are inseparable, it can be said that printing technology plays a pivotal role in the development of the packaging industry. Printing technology can help packaging to create different styles and achieve diversified development, such as traditional style, personalized packaging, sub-packaging, creative packaging and so on. The development of the packaging industry will also drive the growth of demand for printing services, therefore, on the road of transformation and upgrading, it is particularly important for the packaging industry and the printing industry to work together.