Technical advantages of offset printing in flexographic printing
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Offset printing and flexographic printing can also be used for label production, but in a different way, although the use of flexographic printing is more common in narrow-format printers, offset printing has its own advantages and disadvantages.
One of the great advantages of offset printing is that quality is usually better than flexographic printing, but offset printing must use UV curing, while flexographic printing can be used either by hot air or UV curing.
The ink flow rate is another aspect in which flexographic printing differs from offset printing. The ink flow in flexographic printing is controlled by the ink volume of the anilox roll, a factor that is determined by the surface of the paper and the printed image. In the offset printing, the ink flow is controlled by screws (also called buttons) in the ink reservoir, and the amount of ink is adjusted by the buttons.
Advantage competition
offset printing
(1) High print quality
The most frequently mentioned advantage of offset printing is better print quality. Compared to flexographic printing, offset printing has more dots on the unit print and more uniform optical density. The highest precision of flexographic printing is 170-180 dpi, and offset printing can reach 200-350 dpi.
(2) low cost
Offset printing is more advantageous at the start-up cost of a new project, and the cost of offset plates is very low compared to flexographic or gravure cylinders. At the same time, the production time of offset plates is only 10 minutes on average, which is surprisingly short compared to flexographic printing. All of this means that you can start a new project right away without lengthy preparation time.
(3) easy to operate
Jakob Landberg, director of sales and marketing for Nippon, a manufacturer of narrow-format presses, said: “Even a sloppy printer can print excellent quality on offset presses, but care must be taken in flexographic and UV flexographic printing. With 100% effort, a slight loss, the quality may be much worse. Not only that, offset printing is more suitable for printing jobs with larger prints and longer cycles."
Flexographic printing
In contrast to flexographic printing, offset printing is not invulnerable.
Challenge 1: How do printers better control the press?
Although a sloppy printer can also print excellent quality on an offset press, the premise is that he must be very familiar with the press. Offset operations must be fully and professionally trained by the printer and will not become proficient after a certain period of time. In contrast, operators of flexographic printing presses are easier to get started and the training cycle is relatively short.
Challenge 2: How to deal with a wide variety of substrates?
Flexographic printing can be used on non-absorptive substrates such as plastics, polyolefins or stickers, and offset printing is not possible. At the same time, in the face of wide-format substrates, offset printing can only be discouraged. Usually the size of the printing web of the offset offset is fixed, although it can be solved using a printing size variable web offset press, but it is more expensive.
Cost comparison
1. Equipment investment
In general, the investment cost of offset printing equipment is 30% to 40% higher than that of the equivalent configuration of flexographic printing equipment, mainly due to the complicated design of the ink and dampening unit structure.
2. Printing material cost
Offset consumables are much cheaper than flexographic printing.
The cost of making a flexo is 10 times more than the same offset version. In addition, with the improvement of the quality of flexographic printing, the printing cost is also rising, but the cost of offset printing is basically unchanged.
3. Ink cost
In Europe, flexo printers generally use solvent-based inks, which is a significant cost advantage over ink-based offset printing.
4. Printing costs
Landberg believes that the cost of printing varies from job to job. He said: "Although the cost of flexo printing is higher, the total investment in flexographic printing is lower, and the running cost of offset printing is lower than that of flexographic printing. For short-running, it is more cost-effective to use flexographic printing."
5. Operational training
It is necessary to remind printers that training operators to learn to use offset presses is also a cost. In this process, offset operators need to constantly adapt to new technologies and new processes, which is a big challenge compared to flexographic printing.
Offset wind
Look at the busy offset press in the global market, look at the marketing process of offset printing equipment manufacturers, it is not difficult to see that offset printing is the king of the printing market, it is an indisputable fact.
Digital prospects
With the development of digital information, digital printing and offset printing share the same workflow, the same data can be used for both digital printing and offset printing. These two technologies share the same prepress file management environment, so that they can obtain the same Print quality, sharing the same printing standards.
Quality is king
To achieve the quality you need, you need a better way of printing. Today's customers demand higher quality and flexibility from their presses. Printing machine manufacturers are interested in offset printing largely because of their unparalleled advantages in print quality.
Into the label
Landberg said: "The label market is a typical end-customer-driven market driven by world-renowned brands. In addition to more suppliers looking to the high-end sector, Nilpeter also introduced offset printing into the label industry in 1994."
Because the printing quality of offset printing is higher than that of flexographic printing, it is generally used in self-adhesive label printing, which requires long-term quality maintenance, especially for well-known brands such as health care, beauty and wine, which have high requirements for product packaging. They value products very much. The opportunity to distinguish other products on the shelf, so the product label pattern design generally has a higher number of lines and smaller dots. In combination with various requirements, labels printed with offset printing are most suitable. In addition, the quality of the packaging text of pharmaceuticals with a large amount of labels is more prominent and more important than attracting consumers' eyes, because these words must be easily identifiable.
Flexographic printing dominates the market for pressure-sensitive labels, particularly in North America, where the market share of offset printing is growing at a rapid rate, and many label printers today have begun to use offset printing. At present, at least 30% to 40% of the business in each year uses the combination of offset printing and flexographic printing and gravure printing, and the number will increase. Landberg believes that offset printing will become more and more common. He said: "Customers' demands for quality and value-added continue to increase, which has led to further subdivision of the printing process. Offset labels have begun to grow rapidly in the field of wine labels, and many other beautiful labels will follow. ”
Undoubtedly, considering the various factors such as technology and cost, the market share of offset labels will further increase. With its wide application, the label offset printing process will be more mature, and the offset printing market will be unlimited.