New Requirements for Tobacco Packing Printing (I)

With the upgrading of cigarette grades, new requirements have been imposed on the design and manufacture of cigarette packs, which has affected the development of the packaging and printing industry, making it necessary to improve product quality and increase added value through decorating and printing. Here, I will combine the development of cigarette pack printing in the past few years, review its development history, and discuss with everyone the technical development and future of the industry.

The development trend of multi-processes and multi-processes is becoming more and more obvious

Over the past few years, tobacco packaging and decorating and printing companies have gradually established specialization. As long as they are printing factories, they can produce and process cigarette packaging, and promote the development of multi-processes and multi-processes. This has led to a large number of publications and small-scale publications. The printing company gradually withdraws from the production area due to the incompatible equipment process or the inability to meet and meet the requirements for cigarette pack decoration and processing.

The main feature of the multi-process is the use of gravure, offset, screen printing, hot stamping, embossing and other printing and post-printing processes on one product, fully demonstrating the characteristics and advantages of various printing processes, and making full use of these advantages To make up for the inadequacies of other printing processes, and to highlight the quality of the products through process integration.

The main feature of multiple processes is the division of one printing process into multiple processes on one product. The multi-process is mainly to meet the interpenetration between various processes, and to solve the problems such as the cross-color and the brightness of printed gold between various colors.

Gravure printing mainly has the advantages of smooth ink, uniform color, and high brightness when printing in full version; the main disadvantage is that it is difficult to print by halftone, and the transition color printing is not strong when the number of screen lines is 175 lines/inch. It also needs to be used. Electrostatic ink transfer device can ensure that the outlets are not lost. The main advantage of offset printing is that it has a rich variety of product lines for printing screens, and the number of screen lines can be up to 400 lines/inch. The dots are well restored and suitable for printing products with transitional levels. However, when offset printing is used for full-field printing, the thickness of the ink layer has a large influence on the hue, and the hue is more difficult to control, and the color difference is relatively obvious. If a thicker ink layer is needed, it needs to be printed twice. Screen printing has the characteristics of thick ink layer, and its print has a strong three-dimensional effect, friction resistance, and high added value. However, the screen printing equipment generally has a low production efficiency, and a large odor is produced during the production process. When the screen printing screen product is adjusted, the texture is very rough. From this it can be seen that various printing processes have their own advantages and disadvantages. Therefore, it is necessary to study the themes, features, and design concepts of the originals in a targeted manner. According to different product requirements, various printing processes can be combined. Expertise, design product processing process, try to avoid the lack of printing process.

The increase in the type of processing involved in a product requires a product to be printed on multiple types of printers. In multi-process printing, web presses cut large sheets after printing. Due to the impact of continuous cutting accuracy, the accuracy can generally only be guaranteed to be ±0.2 mm, while the sheet-fed printing equipment shows obvious advantages. It can not only meet the needs of multiple printing, but also facilitate the transfer between various types of printing presses. At the same time, due to the high accuracy of printing and post-printing processing of sheet-fed printing equipment, if the paper deformation of each printing process can be fully taken into account, the processing accuracy of the multi-process and multi-process products can be guaranteed and the design requirements of the products can be satisfied.

New holographic hot stamping solution

Holographic hot stamping process has been applied in the packaging and printing industry for many years, and has been reflected in the decoration of many cigarette packets. However, due to the two core problems of hot stamping materials and equipment, it has not been able to develop rapidly. Holographic hot stamping has high requirements on materials. It not only requires a material with high stability, but also requires a more stable material tension. The requirements for equipment are even higher. At present, there is no more ideal stamping equipment in China, which is mainly reflected in the fact that the accuracy and speed of hot stamping cannot meet the requirements. In addition, it can also result in less deformation of the stamping material during drawing or foil feeding. At present, the accuracy of domestic hot stamping equipment is still difficult to meet the requirements of cigarette pack decoration, and the waste in the production process is also large; while the hot stamping speed and accuracy of imported hot stamping equipment are ideal, hot stamping accuracy can reach 0.10 mm, but The equipment price of nearly 10 million yuan is also a problem for investors. Whether it is domestic equipment or imported equipment, the requirements for hot stamping materials are rather harsh. The domestically produced materials are difficult to apply to high-precision cigarette packs for decoration and printing, and the “joint problems” on materials are difficult to completely solve.

With the development of domestic hot stamping equipment and hot stamping materials, holographic hot stamping has a new possibility. First, after more than 10 years of development, the performance of domestic hot stamping machines has been improved. In particular, the widespread popularity of automatic hot stamping machines has enabled the hot stamping process technology and hot stamping process application areas of the packaging industry to be greatly improved and expanded. . At the same time, with the domestic technology in the aluminum foil hot stamping material mature, the effect of hot stamping products has also been significantly improved, and more convenient in the choice of a variety of colors, can basically meet the needs of packaging and decorating. Second, with the development of UV inks and synthetic ink technologies and the increase in the capabilities of printing equipment, the surface printing technology of aluminum foil paper and aluminum foil paper has become increasingly sophisticated, especially the offset printing and screen printing processes. This has made greater breakthroughs in this regard. .

At present, due to the lack of holographic hot stamping equipment and materials, many packaging and printing companies generally print hot or colorless laser-activated aluminum on the product when they encounter a similar process, and then print on the aluminum foil. Four or more colors to achieve similar results with holographic hot stamping. This type of laser-activated aluminum should have strong ink adhesion and is generally made of imported materials. Although the anti-counterfeiting function of this processing technology cannot be compared with the holographic technology, the technology is relatively mature, the equipment is relatively complete, and the effects of layering, three-dimensionality, and color saturation of the anodized aluminum after printing are also good. Moreover, during the secondary scanning in the process of copying the product, due to the strong reflectivity of the underlying laser galvanized aluminum, it is impossible for the scanner to directly obtain the specific parameters of the colored network wires printed on the galvanized aluminum, but it takes a long time. The trials, comparisons, and adjustments in order to get close to the product's printing effect. If it is not to obtain the technical parameters of the original manufacturer to produce the product, it can only achieve the "approximate" effect. In this sense, it can also play a strong anti-counterfeiting effect. Moreover, this processing technology will reduce the production cost, and the requirements for the production process will be greatly reduced.

(to be continued)