Approaching does not mean that the east wind is overwhelming the westerly winds, or that the west wind overwhelms the east winds, nor is it that you sing me out. As a phenomenon, existence has its significance.
The ultimate in spiritual practice is "nothing". What is the highest state of printing? Stealing that it is "natural." Just like the strong food in the biological chain, it is not necessary to control whoever replaces it and eliminates who. Existence is a natural state; survival, it must be a natural choice.
I would like to use this article as a period of competition between flexo and gravure in the industry.
In recent years, flexo printing has achieved unprecedented development in China, but there have also been some problems that cannot be ignored: On the one hand, many flexographic printing equipment introduced domestically have not achieved the desired results (including product quality, productivity, and economic efficiency). But on the other hand, some people are proposing that flexo printing is or will replace gravure. In order to achieve a sustained, healthy and rapid development of our country's flexographic printing, we must solve several important issues of flexo and gravure from understanding and practice.
1. Gravure and flexo are not new printing processes.
Although flexo printing was really valued and rapidly developed in China in recent years, it is not a new process technology. It has experienced many years of development like gravure printing, only in recent years. More mature.
2. The main application areas of gravure printing and flexo printing are, in particular, the orientation of key products and they are all the same. They maintain their advantages in different application areas.
In the fields of packaging and trademark printing, publishing and printing, decorative printing (grain paper and transfer printing) and other special printing (such as banknotes, stamps, lottery and other securities), the advantages of gravure printing and flexo printing are different.
Packaging and trademark printing are major areas of competition for gravure and flexo. The main application products of the flexo are corrugated cardboard, labels, flexible packaging and folding cartons. The printing of corrugated cardboard is printed in more than 85-98% of foreign countries using flexographic printing. The difference between Europe and the United States is not large. It is the smallest difference among all packaging products. In this area is mainly the competition between flexo and offset printing. This area should be one of the most potential areas of application for the development of flexographic printing in China; label printing is a large-scale industry in many developed countries, and the use of flexographic printing is 85-90%. In recent years, label printing in China, especially adhesive labels, has developed rapidly, but the overall scale is still small. Flexographic printing in this industry should have more room for development. Flexible packaging is the industry that has the most disputes in terms of flexo and intaglio in the world and has the greatest development differences. In this area, the United States uses a flexo version of about 70-80%, Europe, 35-40%, and Asia (including Japan and South Korea, etc.) this ratio is between 5-8%, while China's ratio is even lower. The biggest difficulty in the promotion of flexographic technology in our country is estimated in the field of flexible packaging; the proportion of flexographic printing in cartons is not the same in all countries: 30-40% in the United States and 10% in Europe. It can be seen that in the above-mentioned four types of packaging, the carton uses the lowest flexographic printing ratio. In fact, in the field of folding cartons, there are many kinds of printing methods such as glue, soft, and gravure. However, the narrow-width unit flexo presses introduced by our country are mainly aimed at this field. No wonder the actual results are not ideal.
Gravure printing and flexo printing in publishing and printing are mainly used in the printing of newspapers and periodicals. In newspaper printing, the proportion of flexographic applications is between 20-38% in the United States and Europe. The gravure is mainly used for the printing of newspaper supplements. The gravure is an important printing method for high-end, high-volume publications and samples in the United States and Europe. They are actually competing with offset respectively.
Woodgrain printing is a very fast growing industry in the world in recent years. Gravure printing is used in all fields and water-based inks are basically used. Transfer printing is also basically a gravure printing market; all products requiring high security performance are required. (In particular, securities) In recent years, more and more domestic and international use of combination printing, but the main technology is still gravure.
3. The gravure and flexo printing equipments have different structural features, and there are also big differences in the supply of raw and auxiliary materials.
First, the gravure printing machine adopts the unit structure at home and abroad; however, the flexographic printing machine is different. The vast majority of foreign flexographic printing presses are of satellite structure, and the unit type and stacking type only occupy a small proportion. In China, basically, unit type flexo presses (both domestic and imported) are used, and only a handful of imported equipment are available for satellites. The advantages of flexographic printing are, to a considerable extent, associated with satellite flexo presses. The main advantage of the satellite structure is: Because the material tightly wrapped on the center of the impression cylinder, so the tension is very stable, you can not use the automatic control system; the structure is simple; the distance between the imprinting points is short, easy to register QC. Therefore, the satellite type is the best and main structure of a flexo press. Therefore, it can be said that the days when China’s flexo printing machines were mainly based on satellites were the time for the full development of flexo printing.
Second, polychromism is an important development trend, especially in the packaging field. This is a favorable factor for the development of the group printing press. At present, satellite-type flexo presses generally have 4-8 colors, and only a few manufacturers in the world can produce 10-color machines. When the color group exceeds 8 colors, manufacturing difficulty and cost will increase significantly. The majority of gravure printers are 8 to 11 colors. Adding color groups is almost unlimited, and adding color groups does not result in a significant increase in cost. Therefore, the gravure printing machine has greater flexibility in adapting to the multicolorization direction.
Flexographic technology largely depends on the availability of inks and media. There are well-known manufacturers in the United States and Europe, so there are many favorable conditions for promoting this technology. About 90% of flexographic printing plates in China are currently imported, which will affect the promotion of flexographic printing technology to a considerable extent.
4. The quality of flexo printing is rapidly improving, but the quality of gravure printing still leads.
The printing quality is mainly determined by the following indicators: the number of screens, the amount of ink, the accuracy of overprinting, and control factors for printing quality. Gravure printing can reach 70 lines/cm (175 lines/inch), while general flexo printing can only reach 48 lines/cm, high-quality level flexographic printing can reach 52-60 lines/cm; in normal printing, concave The amount of ink on the soft, offset, and offset press is: gravure: 4-8 g/m2, flexo: 3-5 g/m2, or 0.8-2 g/m2 (UV); offset 1-2 g/m2. Therefore, the gravure printing product can obtain the maximum brightness; like the gravure printing machine of the unit type, the satellite type flexo printing machine can obtain the high overprinting precision, but the group type flexographic printing machine generally difficult to obtain such precision; With the flexographic printing Compared with gravure printing, gravure printing is a relatively simple process with less variable factors. Therefore, quality control is simple and repeatability is high. For the printing of fine products, gravure printing increasingly uses electrostatic assisted ink removal systems (ESA), but flexography cannot currently use similar technologies.
5. Flexo continues to maintain its advantages in terms of investment and costs, but the cost of gravure is also falling.
One of the major advantages of flexographic printing is its low investment and low cost. However, it must be pointed out that at present, many articles in China consider that flexo equipment is 1/4 to 1/3 of the price of gravure printing equipment. This is not practical. Although in some cases flexo and gravure printing equipment prices can be compared, but in more cases, the comparison between the two is meaningless. Even if flexo presses are not necessarily comparable, for example, the price for importing narrow flexo presses from different manufacturers in China may differ by 60-100%. The main reason is that manufacturers are different, configuration and technical specifications are different. In addition, there will be a certain gap between the prices of equipment manufactured in different periods. Therefore, a reasonable and reliable comparison is that technical specifications, manufacturers, and manufacturing periods are the same, that is, the same quality and efficiency.
The improvement of the flexo press also pays a corresponding price or cost. According to research data from internationally renowned manufacturers: Previously, the cost of a flexo press was only 50% of a gravure printer. However, gravure and flexo printing have been changing since the 1980s, and the gap between them has been continuously narrowing. The fact is that, under comparable conditions, the price of the unit gravure press is 20-25% higher than that of the satellite flexo press; the price difference between the unit gravure press and the unit type flexo press is less than this ratio.
In terms of platemaking cycle and cost, flexo occupies the most obvious advantage. Flexo can respond more quickly to the market than gravure; gravure can cost up to twice as much as flexo, and it also requires investing in the required site for the plate cylinder. Compared to gravure printing, flexo belts have shorter lengths and drive power consumption can be reduced by up to 50%. In addition, the amount of hot air required for drying is less, which means that flexographic printing presses also have less running costs than gravure printing.
However, the problem of gravure and flexographic costs can only be answered with reasonableness when combined with print pattern requirements and lot sizes. In flexo printing, the cost of various batches does not change much. Compared with the gravure printing, the flexographic printing cost has a greater advantage in small batches, and there is not much difference in the medium batch, while in the long live printing, the intaglio printing has advantages.
6. The environmental advantages of flexo printing are obvious. Gravure is working hard to improve.
The environmental protection of printing technology is mainly determined by the following factors: environmental pollution, health requirements and resource consumption. Flexo is more environmentally friendly than gravure because water-based inks are basically used and they use less energy. However, the use of solvents is not inherent in the difference between gravure and flexo. When we promote flexo printing, we also need to correct a common mistake: the difference between gravure and flexo is equivalent to the difference between solvent ink and water-based ink. In fact, both gravure and flexo can use either solvent or water or other inks. The real difference between them is the proportion of water-based inks used. At present, the development and promotion of gravure printing inks are accelerating.
7. The market and technical conditions are more conducive to the development of gravure printing, and the full development conditions of flexo printing must be created.
The most important market and technological factors that affect the development of gravure printing and flexo printing are: appreciation and consumption habits, technical support systems, market environment, and scale. Among all the influencing factors, appreciation and consumption habits are the most easily overlooked but fundamental factors. At present, there are basically two international models: the American model, Europe, and Asian model. A country that values ​​fashion culture tends to pursue high-end and specialty packaging, and therefore prefers gravure printing. Obviously, China is closer to the European and Asian (Japan-Korea) model.
The technical foundation or technical support system includes many aspects, such as the conditions of teaching and training courses, the supply of equipment and raw materials, and the degree of technical support improvement. In certain countries and regions where manufacturers (devices, plates, inks, etc.) are more developed, the development of such technologies will be faster. Another aspect of the technical foundation is: Does the equipment need to be introduced, or what is the domestic manufacturing level? The development level of flexographic and gravure printing in a country and region has a certain correlation with its manufacturing level capability. China has a relatively good technical basis for gravure printing.
The degree and scale of the market have a major impact on the promotion of flexographic printing technology. Whether a market is normative determines the confidence to promote the use of flexographic printing. People generally believe that gravure printing has better security performance. The average batch size of the product also directly affects the choice of gravure or flexo. The larger the average batch size, the more likely it is to use gravure printing. The population is an important factor in determining the average volume of products and is therefore an important factor in determining the ratio of gravure and flexo printing. From these factors, the promotion of gravure printing in China has more advantages.
Flexo and gravure are mainly coexistence and complementarity in areas that can be compared or compete, rather than the "who replaces who" relationship. Flexo and gravure are constantly improving technology to overcome their own deficiencies. The market share of flexo and gravure varies from country to country, and the core force that drives its development is the specific market and technical conditions. Both gravure and flexo have good development prospects in our country, but we cannot copy the development model of other countries and regions.
At present, there are two modes for international printing: the American model and the European-Asia model. A country that values ​​fashion culture tends to pursue high-end and specialty packaging, and therefore prefers gravure printing, such as Japan and South Korea. Obviously, China is closer to the European-Asia model.