Packaging prepress technology development trend
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Packaging is an important part of the printing and publishing industry. From a global perspective, packaged products account for 20% of all prints and grow at a rate of 5% per year. In Asia, the proportion of packaged products is 29%, with a growth rate of 7%, which is twice the world average growth rate.
Because of the different forms of substrates, such as paper, cardboard, plastic, metal and glass, the packaging is printed differently. At the same time, various shapes of products need to be printed in packaging printing, and various die-cutting and post-processing techniques are also used in the final molding of labels, boxes and paper bags.
In practice, we call the stage between the creative process driven by the currency field and the process driven by the benefit, called the prepress process. The prepress process has two important functions:
First, strive to transform creative designs into matching tools for mass production in the shortest possible time, such as plates and die-cutting boards. All quality, brand and requirements must be met by the end user or customer.
Second, the different characteristics and complexities of the production process must be taken into account in order to ensure consistent results in both repeated and off-site production processes.
At present, in the packaging market, there are several important development trends that are causing changes in the prepress process: first, the consumer market is becoming increasingly fierce, and rapidly changing consumer goods are constantly competing for their respective development space. As a result, manufacturers are changing packaging designs more frequently to gain market initiative. The design cycle has been shortened to a few days, and the production cycle of packaged products has become shorter and shorter. Secondly, with the continuous innovation of materials science, printing technology and production technology, it has also brought about the development of production tools and processes. As a result, the need to strengthen collaboration across the supply chain is growing, not only to make a profit, but also to meet the needs of globalization. Again, since all the packaging designs were originally using desktop software, such as Adobe IIIUStrator. But these software lack effective cutting capabilities to efficiently complete design tasks. With the development of desktop software technology, designers and customers agree that PDF will be the perfect data conversion format. But some important packaging design elements in PDF will be lost, so it is not suitable for complex packaging designs.
To this end, the software developed for packaging pre-press provides the function of the packaging process, the most well-known of which is the trapping function, as well as the processing of spot colors and custom inks, such as ink usage and printing data. Metering, etc. At present, the addition of anti-counterfeiting elements to the packaging design to prevent counterfeiting and copying is becoming a new hot spot in the currency market.
In reality, in addition to focusing on image processing, it is also necessary to coordinate the process flow parallel to the end customer and the producer, such as the design of the box-type structure, die-cutting, de-disposal and other subsequent processes. Packaging designers are eager to see that the newly developed design software system can achieve the perfect combination of box design and image, can carry out three-dimensional preview, and even preview the actual placement of the box type on the shelf. In the production, it can realize direct color inkjet proofing on the carton carton. Through the combination of CAD and image design, the same product can be produced on a box prototype.
In the actual production, packaging printers must consider not only individual labels and packaging, but also the same or different design of the group. In general, these individual labels and packages are imprinted with conventional copy machines, and they must be placed in the same position as the die-cuts of the die-cuts used after printing.
Due to the emergence of large-format laser imagesetters, the digital assembly process can be done directly in the prepress section, and then the film output from the large format laser imagesetter is printed on the plate.
At present, with the advent of direct plate-making equipment on the market, the intermediate quality of the film is no longer needed, and direct plate making can be carried out, which has obvious advantages for packaging production. First, the design center can deliver data to different print ends in any data format. Second, the film is omitted, the plate making time is reduced, and the printing cycle is greatly shortened. Third, you can make better use of the plates and avoid possible errors in the print.
While direct plate-making equipment has replaced tandem equipment, high-quality inkjet printers have been able to simulate the final printed product with the support of appropriate color management software.
In addition, for packaging companies, the ideal front end for direct plate making can accept image design in one or more different industry standard formats; on the other hand, it can also accept plate printing from CAD systems. Under normal circumstances, the design that the customer has signed or the version that is consistent with the die-cut version is not modifiable. However, there are also special circumstances, such as: adjusting the printed image to different plates, adding print control strips and post-processing marks, and adding production control and tracking information as a whole.
A direct plate-making process should require a matching prepress system control that can be used to group different image designs with corresponding tool sets. This flexibility is required for shorter production cycles to accommodate shorter cargo delivery times. The necessary for fast circulation of goods.
Direct plate imaging equipment can be used for both offset and flexographic printing (not new to gravure digital printing). In packaging printing, offset direct plate making equipment is the first to be applied. At the same time, special requirements for packaging and printing must also be noted. For the choice of plates, it is believed that in the near future, thermal plates will dominate in long-run printing, and the thermal plate has a high print durability and is well adapted to spot color inks. UV laser sensitized plates are suitable for short-run printing in small batches, such as trademark printing.
The rapid development is the digital plate making applied to flexographic printing. The surface of the standard resin plate used is coated with a thin layer of dissolving layer. A powerful laser source exposes the dissolving layer according to the data to form a negative image. . Currently, flexographic plate-making equipment on the market can support a variety of plates and large production volumes, including direct imaging on the sleeve and sleeve version.
We hope that digital printing will be gradually introduced. The key issue is how to digest the high cost of raw materials by providing users with high value-added products. The latest printing trends will not only affect pre-press production, but will also affect the entire packaging production chain. Consumable suppliers in developed countries have established many open associations to increase efficiency and reduce the cost of the production chain, and they are setting standards for collaboration, communication and coordination throughout the process. There is no doubt that the exchange of data worldwide will take place over the Internet.
This integrated packaging product chain will affect every aspect, and package producers must research new strategies to meet user needs, expand support for all customers, and create new competitive advantages. There are many interactions between packaging manufacturers and their users and collaborators. This is a creative process, some internal and some with the user. At the same time, it is also an assessment that creates a production environment in which planning and order management are closely linked.
All of these activities have one thing in common, focusing on product and production instructions and precise management of design, prepress production and production from different systems. It can be seen that the future packaging world requires that most of the information be processed directly by the WEB to achieve safe and accurate processing.
Web-based software for production environments has been developed: selection from design libraries, detailed adjustments, cost estimation, image management, review control and approval processes, order and reorder management, production process tracking, etc. All of these features will be implemented quickly and applied to packaging production practices.