On Application of New Technology in Packaging and Printing Industry in China

1 Introduction

With the development of modern science and technology, similar products in the commodity market are increasingly homogenous, which makes the design of the outer packaging of the goods an important factor in determining whether the goods can win the customers and the market. The packaging design of goods includes two important components: packaging structure design and packaging and decoration design. Good product packaging design is the perfect combination of structural modeling and decorating design, and the final realization of packaging and decorating mainly depends on advanced packaging and printing technology. Design is a prerequisite, and printing is the ultimate means of achieving design and quality assurance. Design must take into account printing factors and meet the requirements of printing conditions and printing.

With the rapid development of the packaging and printing industry, many new technologies have emerged in various aspects of packaging and printing, which has greatly promoted the technological progress of the entire packaging industry. Such as computer-aided design (CAD), computer-aided manufacturing (CAM), trademark code production, no film engraving system, computer-to-plate technology (CTP), flexographic printing technology, laser die-cutting, high-efficiency multi-function automatic folder gluer. In particular, the continuous advancement in the application of computer technology and printing technology has brought about fundamental changes in the packaging and printing industry.

2. Analysis of the status quo of China's packaging and printing industry

With the rapid development of China's commodity economy, China's packaging industry has made considerable progress. In 1980, the total output value of China's packaging industry was only 7.2 billion yuan, and by 1998 it had reached 180 billion yuan. The packaging industry has risen from 36th to 14th in 1998 in 40 major industries of the national economy. The packaging industry has to bear the task of packaging 3 trillion yuan worth of domestic commodities and more than US$12 billion worth of export commodities each year, and plays an important supporting role in the national economy. It can be said that the packaging industry has now become a major industry with paper, plastic, metal, glass, interior printing, and various types of packaging machinery. "Products, second-class packaging, third-class prices," the backward situation.

As the major packaging and printing industry in China's packaging industry, in recent years, the number of employees, the total value of production, and the level of technology have achieved greater development than in the past decade. In particular, the development of the packaging and printing industry during the Eighth Five-Year Plan period Fast, production output soared. However, the proportion of technical content in the industry is low, and there is a big gap between the printed matter quality and the international advanced level in terms of printing quality, design, production, and overall level. At present, China's plate-making and printing, post-press processing, and equipment are still at the international level in the mid to late 1980s. In particular, the application of computer technology in the field of packaging and printing is relatively backward. For example, paper packaging containers are lightweight, non-polluting, recyclable, and conducive to environmental protection and the reuse of resources. It is a very promising packaging method. Therefore, paper product packaging plays an important role in various types of packaging. With the rapid development of society and economy, more and more varieties of packaging cartons are required, and the requirements for the decoration and structure of packaging cartons are getting higher and higher. Traditional manual design can no longer meet the requirements. At present, many packaging companies in China The traditional manual design, plate making and processing are still used. For example, some companies basically adopt the analogy method when designing the carton box structure. There is neither standard nor design basis, which often results in unreasonable structure, which makes the wastes easily appear when the automatic cartoning is being used. Drawings, die-cutting layout drawings, backing contouring drawings, and carton design are often hand-plotted, drawing long cycles, poor results, high costs, and high product quality. Therefore, for the further development of the packaging and printing industry, it is imperative that the technology be carried out first, and the technical transformation of the packaging and printing industry in China should be implemented.

There are two main reasons for the slow application of new technologies in the packaging and printing industry: On the one hand, due to historical reasons, China's packaging industry, including the packaging and printing industry, is a supporting industry. It started late, has a weak foundation, and its overall level is not high. On the other hand, packaging printing has its own particularity and complexity. Packaging printing is not only the exterior decoration requires exquisite printing, highlighting the characteristics of the product. At the same time, it also obeys the packaging structure design. Due to the various shapes of the products, the packaging structure is often very complicated. The packaging structure design must not only highlight the product features, but also have a protective effect on the products, but also meet the needs of transportation, warehousing and other aspects, so many packaging is shaped, so that the packaging The difficulty of printing technology has increased. In addition, due to the different packaging materials, the substrates printed by the packaging are also various, which requires different printing methods, and sometimes a product needs multiple printing methods to complete. From this we can see that there is a big difference between packaging printing and general publishing and printing. Before packaging, printing is also different from publishing before printing. Its technical development should be independent of publishing before printing. Therefore, combined with China's current level of economic and technological development, it is impossible to blindly introduce ready-made technologies and purchase equipment to achieve technological advancement in the industry.

3. The application of computer technology in China's packaging and printing industry

3.1 Overview

The development and application of China's computer technology in the packaging industry started relatively late, and there is a big gap between it and the developed countries, but it is also constantly moving forward, and has achieved some gratifying results. The rapid development of the socialist commodity economy has posed a full range of challenges for packaging quality and the economic benefits of packaging companies. The promotion and application of computer technology in the packaging industry has become an important measure related to the continued development of the industry. In recent years, the use of color desktop systems and high-end networking systems for electrical extensions has effectively improved the quality of packaging layouts in China. However, since such a conventional color prepress system is not a packaging production professional system, it cannot provide an overall solution to the packaging problem. To this end, China's packaging and scientific research departments, universities and colleges have developed a number of good functional, practical and better packaging structure, packaging modeling and packaging machinery and other aspects of CAD software, such as Founder Packaging developed by Peking University Founder The system, the “carton/carton CAD system” developed by the Tianjin Institute of Light Industry and the “laser cutting template system” developed by the Shanghai Laser Institute filled a gap in packaging CAD/CAM technology in China. These softwares are playing an active role in improving the level of packaging technology in China and promoting the development of the packaging industry.

3.2 Development and Application of Packaging Prepress System

The packaging prepress system is a new area that has been developed with computer technology. Its production is inseparable from people's pursuit of high-end packaging, because the traditional process and methods can no longer meet the needs of various types of product packaging, especially in the box-type design, CNC die-cutting, fight board, etc., the process is complex, The efficiency of the domestic packaging industry is low and the production cost is too high. The development of packaging and printing requires a pre-press packaging system, but due to some special needs of the packaging, such as hot stamping, embossing and other processes, the thickness of the paper, the requirements of the puzzle and die-cutting plate making, a large number of technical standards and specifications of the box products and other requirements The general prepress system is far from meeting the needs, which requires the development of a prepress system for special requirements for packaging and printing.

As a leading high-tech enterprise in China, which is in the forefront of the world's printing and publishing technology, Founder of Peking University has launched a pre-press packaging system with advanced world standards. This is China's first self-developed professional packaging design system based on the Chinese platform. The system integrates the carton structure design, decoration design and color printing into one, and its function is perfect. If the system is based on the structural characteristics of the packaging carton, it provides a flexible and convenient box-shaped design tool, and the most complete box-shaped database of the collection box types in China, which can be used to complete the packaging carton more conveniently, with high quality and with high precision. Structural design and drafting; the software has a good openness, can output a common data format, and can be combined with a variety of graphic images on different application platforms, flexible and convenient processing of high-quality text, graphics and images in the packaging layout Information; interactively imposition on the entire screen on the computer screen, without having to carry out cumbersome continuous operation; in the production phase, the software can output the die-cut data of the packaging carton, such as die-cut data output in the form of processing code, can Direct control of laser processing equipment open mold. The system enables the pre-press graphic design and production to be linked with the post-press processing links organically through a computer, which comprehensively improves the production efficiency of packaging production and the accuracy of manual control of packaging production quality. In short, the Founder packaging system has been able to accurately control all aspects of packaging design, production and processing with all-digital means, and has made China's packaging CAD technology a welcome step toward integration.

With the continuous deepening of the application of computer technology in the field of packaging, the requirements for packaging design systems have become higher and higher, and the functional limitations of existing packaging design systems in China have also become increasingly exposed. First of all, there are few software types and they are not widely used. Due to the wide variety of modern packaging, different features and requirements, and for all types of packaging software that currently appear in China, it can only be applied to a certain type of packaging design, and software design systems are still imperfect for such packaging. Such as Founder Founder software is only for the general carton design system, its packaging design in the paper products still need to be further improved, such as the pre-design of packaging and printing should take into account the process design, process design also consider Postpress and so on. Secondly, it is necessary to further strengthen the software's automatic control technology function, especially for the functions such as automatic paging, cross-page processing, creep control, and copy control.

3.3 Challenges and Problems

With the continuous development of multi-functional computer application systems developed for the packaging industry in the world, advanced technologies such as computer artificial intelligence and computer networks have emerged in the packaging industry, marking the increasing application of computer technology in the field. The higher the application, the wider the range. As China's packaging and printing industry is in the development stage, we should increase the intensity of research and application of this new technology, but it must not be carried out blindly. Combining the actual conditions of the packaging printing industry in China at this stage, the following issues should be solved:

Improve color management technology as soon as possible

In color printing, the requirement of color restoration is very high. In the prepress process without color management, the input and output of colors may be very different. This is mainly because the value of the computer when processing colors is very large. Changes cause color distortion. If the computer scans, processes, and outputs color, it uses technology to control the color processing so that the processed color is as close as possible to the original color. This is color management technology. In the color prepress process, color management plays a fundamental, irreplaceable role. There is no color management technology that can be used in China's printing industry. When using computers to process color, it often depends on the user's experience, which brings great difficulties to the true restoration of color. Fortunately, the color management technology jointly developed by Peking University Founder and Kodak Company will change the status of the domestic printing industry without color management and greatly advance the digitalization of color printing in China.

Strengthen the development and application of carton CAD/CAM technology

Paper product packaging plays an important role in various types of packaging. In particular, the use of color printing carton packaging is very extensive. The well-developed CAD/CAM system can be used to conveniently select the packaging material, corrugated type, appearance size and style when designing the structure and pattern of the packaging box, design and process the carton box structure, layout plan, printing and decorating Patterns, draw contours of backing processing, and die-cutting charts of boxes and chips, and then the system can control related equipment to automatically produce and process according to the design results. At present, our country has a certain foundation in this regard and we should further strengthen the development and application.

Actively adapt to the development of high technology

With the development of information technology and the advent of the Internet age, the printing industry is facing great challenges and opportunities for development. The traditional printing industry with a long history of development is actively adapting to the development of high technology. Many printing companies around the world are exploring