Flexographic Printing Fitness Analysis of Packaging Design

Tabletop printing presses have been introduced for several years, and this new printing method, flexographic printing, is gradually accepted by packaging customers. So, how to design product packaging for flexographic printing. Gradually, it has attracted the attention of customers, design companies, plate-making companies, and printing manufacturers. Flexographic printing should pay attention to the problem of design, how to play the advantages of flexo printing, and avoid the disadvantages of flexo printing. Here is a brief introduction based on the experience in our work.

From the design point of view, the greatest advantage of the flexographic printing method is that there are more color groups in the press, and a variety of spot colors can be used to complete the design scheme. This is unmatched by offset printing and gravure printing.

The first is the use of spot colors to achieve color stability. Since packaging products often involve a large number of printing of trademarks, the colors used by many companies' trademarks are not the same as the colors of printing ink primary colors yellow, yellow, blue and black, and often require two or more primary colors. The superposition can be achieved, and the use of spot colors can be simpler and more stable, because the stability of multiple color overprint effects depends on the stability of each color superimposed. For example, if a full-size red background in the Xianglian cigarette pack is not used, it will inevitably need to be superimposed with three primary colors to complete it. In the case of mass printing, the consistency of color cannot be guaranteed at all, and it is extremely difficult to overprint. . The use of spot colors in flexo printing can be achieved through the use of spot inks, fixed anilox roller lines and other means to ensure the consistency of the printing results and eliminate the difficulty of overprinting.

Second, you can use spot colors to expand the color space of prints to make the screen more vivid. For four-color printing, many colors in the natural world cannot be printed. The main reason is that the color gamut space is too small. To enlarge the color gamut space only depends on increasing the spot color, and the characteristics of the multicolor group of flexo printing machines are just right. Suitable for this need.

Finally, the use of spot colors can solve many problems that are difficult to solve, such as small anti-white characters and thin lines. The use of anti-white characters in various types of packaging products is very extensive, but the small anti-white characters have brought great difficulties to overprinting. After the use of spot colors, this problem has been easily solved and there is no problem of overprinting. Another example is large-area flat screens, especially those that are close to neutral gray, such as blue-gray, gray-green, gray-brown, etc.. Overprinting inks with natural colors tends to cause problems such as ink bars and color casts. Can solve similar problems well. In short, proper use of spot colors is a key aspect when designing flexo packages.

Flexo printing also has an advantage for packaging design. Its fine line printing effect is very clear and full of ink. In addition to the extensive use of spot colors, packaging design has a feature that requires the use of a large number of thin lines and small prints. On the one hand, it can provide users with the necessary information, such as origin, date, description, etc., on the other hand, it plays well. The decorative effect. Fine lines for flexo printing can be printed finer than register lines, small words can be printed under 4Pt font size, and strokes are clear. For example, the neck mark (original image) of McGraw-Brewers has a large number of fine lines and is very slender, with a complicated structure and high definition requirements. When offset printing is used, such small text and lines can be easily broken, and the ink is not thick enough, and flexo printing can avoid these deficiencies and fully demonstrate the advantages of thin lines.

The traditional view is that flexo printing has certain flaws in the representation of levels and is not suitable for printing rich manuscripts, but this is not absolute. In flexo printing, the dot enlargement rate is larger than that of offset printing, and the performance of the highlights is not satisfactory. However, the thickness of the ink layer is much richer and more stable than other printing methods. Therefore, special use is only necessary. The network connection method can solve the problem of network expansion. Please see the picture above. The still life and animals in the picture are not only colorful, but also rich in levels. In particular, the shades of the shadows are outstanding. This is unmatched by offset printing. This shows that the flexographic printing line is not only possible, but also has its unique advantages.

Flexo printing has the same advantages and disadvantages as other printing methods. How to avoid weaknesses is the reality that we face in designing, producing, and printing all processes. We need to work together to solve these problems in order to better play the advantages of flexo printing and make flexographic printing. Print more and more beautiful flexo products.

Beijing Shi Jiajia Company Wu Xuefei