There are various types and structures of carton printing presses, including gravure printing presses, flexographic printing presses, and lithographic printing press suitable for pre-printing carton facings, as well as multifunctional models that can be connected to complete the varnishing, hot stamping, silk-screen printing, etc., and there are web structures as well as flatbed models; and there are also flexographic printing presses suitable for the direct printing of corrugated boards, and the equipment can be connected to complete the slotting, corner-cutting, cutting, creasing and creasing. There are also flexo printing machines suitable for direct printing on corrugated boards.
1. Types, structure and production of carton printing machines
Pre-printing equipment for cartons refers to the face paper (such as kraft cardboard or white cardboard) and corrugated cardboard before laminating, pre-printing machine will be used to print the graphics on the box in the face paper in the corresponding position, and then the printing is completed on the face of the paper and corrugated cardboard to be laminating, and then die-cutting machine through the die-cutting indentation and shaping, that is, to make a complete finished cardboard box. This type of machine is characterized by high printing productivity and printing accuracy, more suitable for printing beverages, beer, electronic equipment and other food packaging of high-grade colour corrugated boxes. Semi-finished products printed by pre-printing equipment of web structure can be directly laminated into corrugated cardboard on the tile line. Due to the production of a certain amount of heating and forming time, the use of such equipment can better improve the strength of corrugated boxes. The flexographic printing machine suitable for corrugated cardboard printing is printed on the surface layer of the uneven corrugated cardboard, and the effect of the quality of the graphic ink colour it prints is obviously inferior to the printing quality of the pre-printing equipment, and it is especially unsuitable for the printing of fine dot-coloured products. Therefore, this kind of machine is generally only suitable for printing medium and low-grade carton products with coarse graphics.
2. Basic principles of carton printing machine
Selection of carton printing machine from the economy, technology and applicable principles, in order to better improve the economic efficiency of enterprises. The so-called economic, that is, the equipment investment should be small, the equipment to use the space should be large; machine used by the operator should be less, the production cost should be low, which is to improve the economic efficiency of the basis. From a technical point of view, the product layout is relatively fixed, the number of printing is particularly large, the printing area is also large, the layout of the ink layer is relatively thick products, should be selected for printing with gravure printing presses, which is conducive to improving the printing quality of the face of the paper and production efficiency. Printing layout of colour-rich products, graphic printing area of a large layout, layout by the dots into the colour of the product as well as each batch of printing the number of indeterminate size of the product, you can choose lithographic printing machine for printing; the surface of the rougher surface paper materials, simple line version, ink colour requirements are not strict, layout of local text, patterns need to be changed often or need to be reprinted several times the product, as well as die-cutting and creasing version of the simpler, For rough carton products, flexo printing and slotting machines can be purchased to directly print and inline slit, cut corners, slot and crease corrugated board. The type of printing machine to be purchased should be suitable for the characteristics of the product structure of the factory. Such as a variety of structural carton products, production scale of the factory, can have both gravure, lithographic and flexographic printing machine. In this way, the comprehensive use of equipment, production efficiency and product printing quality can achieve a greater improvement.
In short, carton enterprises to buy printing machine must be clear about the production direction of their factories. That is to say, the purchase of machines before the first must be clear about the characteristics of their products, and to accurately understand the performance and characteristics of a variety of printing machines, in order to correctly decide to buy what models and configure which ancillary equipment or devices, so that the equipment purchased to give full play to the role it should be.
3. Selection of printing machine should know
The correct purchase of printing machine is related to the factory’s productivity and product quality can be played properly. Equipment procurement is different from raw materials, once the machine is put into use, generally can not be returned. If there is no accurate understanding of market conditions, blindly purchased printing equipment, after a period of time after the use of the machine, even if it has been found that the existence of the disadvantages and not suitable for the characteristics of the factory products, but also has been too late. Therefore, the purchase of printing machines must hold a prudent attitude, the first serious investigation of the market situation, timely understanding and grasp of the latest technological developments, to be clear about what kind of products need to use what kind of printing machine, thus conducive to improving productivity and quality, and is conducive to reducing consumption and production costs, which should be considered the most important factor. Therefore, the purchase of printing machines should focus on mastering the following aspects of the situation:
(1) Understand the performance and use of the machine
Understand the performance and use of the printing machine is very important procurement knowledge, but also related to the purchase of the printing machine can be suitable for the characteristics of the factory’s products and to ensure that the achievement of low input and high output of the key links. Therefore, before the purchase of equipment must be through careful consultation and in-depth market investigation and understanding, in order to accurately understand the actual performance of the printing machine and the exact purpose. Market research is not only simply to the equipment manufacturer to visit the understanding, but also to the relevant carton factory, printing machine factory to understand the actual use of the printing machine performance and situation, so that the understanding can be more accurate, can better avoid the procurement of one-sidedness and blindness.
A variety of printing machines have technical performance, requirements and scope of application and other requirements. Therefore, the procurement of printing presses to understand the relevant technical requirements, in order to reasonably select and acceptance of the standard requirements, so that the purchase of printing presses to better meet and comply with the performance of equipment and production requirements. Printing machine technical requirements mainly include machine specifications, maximum and minimum printing width, printing material thickness, overprint accuracy, machine speed, motor power, etc., which must be grasped clearly.
(2) Choose the right price of the printing machine
The price of the printing machine determines the cost of production, to get out of the ‘good printing machine price must be high’ and ‘cheap no good’ misunderstanding. In fact, due to the level of production management, production scale and production of regional economic differences, the same type of printing machine, there will be a certain price difference, and even some factories produce advanced performance of the printing machine, but the price is lower than other factories in general performance of the printing machine. Therefore, the purchase must pay attention to the understanding of many parties, investigation and comparison, so that the purchase of the printing machine production capacity and product printing quality both to get a better guarantee, the machine price is reasonable.
(3) Actual situation of the factory to determine the purchase
To reasonably determine the configuration of the purchase of machines. The so-called machine configuration refers to the structure of the printing machine and some of its production functions and devices, such as the number of printing units, online configuration of the varnish, die-cutting, hot stamping and other units or devices. Machine configuration should take into account the characteristics of the production process, for example, on the flexographic printing process characteristics,
It is with the lithographic and gravure printing process there are obvious differences, such as with the lithographic and gravure printing process, on the same colour layout of both the field and fine text, both lines and reticulation of the product, as long as the production of a printing plate using a colour group can meet the requirements of the printing quality.
If the flexographic process, you have to split a page into two plates with two colour groups for printing, in order to better overcome the process prone to paste the plate and other quality problems. Therefore, if this product is selected for flexographic printing, we have to consider the number of reasonable formulation of the colour group. Such as the printing of pre-printed carton tissue, cartons and other packaging prints mainly, varnishing, die-cutting, hot stamping and other processes are often indispensable, it is necessary to consider the configuration of drying devices and the corresponding function of the unit.
(4) Reasonable purchase of machine specifications
The specifications of the printing machine is related to the size of the printing width, the printing area of the machine means high productivity. Large and medium-sized carton products to expand the size of the width of the general in more than 1000mm. Therefore, on the one hand, the printing width of the machine purchased should also be above 1000mm to meet the production requirements of carton products; on the other hand, the business competition in the carton industry is quite strong now, and the printing micro-profit situation is increasingly coming to the fore.
Some printers will improve the printing profit target, aiming at improving the printing width, for some large number of products. Often through the use of large version of the printing, to reduce production consumption and production costs, improve the effectiveness of printing and production efficiency.
Printing beverages and beer, such as the main pre-printed carton products, the general number of prints are relatively large, you can consider the purchase of large printing presses for printing. Therefore, in the case of saturated production, if two medium-sized presses can be used to complete the output, as long as the use of a large-scale printing machine can be used, or to consider the purchase of large-scale printing machine is good. Printing carton based factories, product specifications are relatively large, buy a large printing machine has a greater development and use of space, is conducive to improving production efficiency.
(5) Choose a good supplier
Choose a good supplier is an important part of the procurement control of printing equipment, good performance of the printing equipment on the carton production efficiency and product quality is essential to improve. Printing equipment purchasing control should be in the machine performance, printing adaptability to ensure that the basis of the price is relatively appropriate conditions, so that the product printing quality and production costs are better balanced. Therefore, the choice of printing equipment suppliers, it is very important to consider the choice of production capacity and scale is relatively large, strong manufacturing technology, product quality, good after-sales service manufacturers. They will play a certain role in guaranteeing the stability of the factory’s future production and quality.
