New Requirements for Tobacco Packing Printing (Part 2)

The adoption of new materials has become inevitable

The emergence of new materials for printing can be described as an endless stream. The rapid development of cigarette pack decoration printing in recent years has found a place for many new materials. It is also the wide application of these new materials that makes the package more colorful.

1. Paper. Previously, only relatively single paper such as offset paper, coated paper, gray-white board paper, and white paper board were used, and the effect of displaying printed matter through paper was relatively small; now, the small-size paper is rarely used on cigarette packs, but increased. Composite paper (including gold cardboard, silver cardboard, laser cardboard, glass cardboard, etc.), coated paper, aluminum spray paper, aluminum foil paper, etc., have become necessary means for expressing or achieving better product results through paper. .

2. Ink. The use of inks has undergone even greater changes. With the increase in the number of types of printing equipment, traditional offset, gravure, screen printing and flexo printing inks have undergone great changes. The increase in offset synthetic inks and UV inks has laid the foundation for the use of composite papers; gravure printing is mainly aimed at customers' requirements for environmental protection and product odors, and the use of alcohol-soluble (or water-based) inks has become very popular; in order to obtain screen printing Wrinkles, ice and other special effects, in the composition of the ink, drying methods, the manufacturers have found their own solutions, even if the control of ink drying speed, the main idea is similar to the same; flexo printing because of its use of environmentally friendly ink, Great progress has been made in the packaging of food and other commodities. At the same time, the use of special inks such as temperature change inks, UV inks, and pearlescent inks has become increasingly widespread.

3. Postpress material. The laser die-cut version has replaced the manual die-cut version, and the trace lines have been gradually replaced by "buckle plates" to improve the processing accuracy of the products and meet the dimensional tolerance requirements of the packaging machines of different cigarette printing plants. Different papers use different dimensional tolerances on the packaging machine of the same cigarette printing plant to meet the requirements of product appearance molding degree. The embossing and hot stamping plates of the electric engraving gradually replace the corroded plates to improve the fineness of the products and the service life of the plates, and many fine lines are reflected. At the same time, hot stamping with concave-convex effect has also been developed into one-time processing with electric engraving. This not only improves the matching accuracy of hot stamping and embossing, but also enhances the three-dimensional effect of the product, and reduces the loss of the process.

From large batch to small batch production
Now, the output of each batch of jobs has been reduced more than before. In the past, each batch of jobs required 200 or 500 reams of paper. Now a batch of 100 reams of paper is used in large quantities, and some even in batches. Only use 3 to 5 reams of paper. This is due to the acceleration of market changes and the lack of market forecasts, or the lack of market control, leading tobacco companies to transfer their decoration risks to decorating and printing companies. In other words, decoration companies need to reduce the risk of backlogs in order to pursue a “zero inventory” of packaged goods, and then divide the monthly demand for decoration into several batches or send them to the decorating and printing companies on a ten-day basis, thus forming multiple batches. , small batch processing forms. At the same time, the development trend of the multi-processes and multi-processes mentioned earlier is also the reason for this phenomenon. Due to the large number of processing steps and long processing cycles of the products, in order to ensure the accuracy of the products and the registration accuracy of each process and reduce the amount of deformation of the paper in each process, the time between the processes and the processes must be reduced. The application of small batch processing methods is also becoming more and more widespread. In addition, with the acceleration of technological transformation of decorating and printing companies, the production efficiency of equipment has been greatly improved. Previously used domestic two-color machine to produce 100-color six-color job, it usually takes 10 days to complete, but now the import of six-color machine can be completed in one day, which also allows decorating production companies to keep up with orders demand for decoration companies. Previously, orders for production time of 7 to 15 days were generally completed in 3 to 5 days. The increase in supply capacity has also encouraged decorating production companies to undertake orders for small quantities.

In the area of ​​post-press processing, in order to meet the requirements for high-volume production of products, printing equipment is equipped with connection pressure embossing, indentation, and die cutting stations to efficiently and quickly produce products. However, with the development of multi-process printing, multi-process, multi-batch, and small-batch printing, more and more equipment is changing from wire-cutting to off-line die-cutting to improve the adaptability of equipment. This not only can adapt to the cooperation between various types of printing processes, but also effectively solves the problems of costly purchase and maintenance of rollers such as embossing, indentation and die cutting for wire-cutting of a single product.

In addition, a variety of printing presses will also be welcomed. Such presses include gravure printing, offset printing, flexo printing, screen printing, UV coating, hot stamping, embossing, indentation, die cutting, etc. The number of each process unit can be increased and decreased, and it can be exchanged in order, meeting the development requirements of decorating and printing. Now domestic decorating and printing enterprises have introduced several production lines of this type, and at the same time multi-process printing meets the requirement of rapid production. We have reason to believe that this type of equipment will have a good development prospect in the future.

Increased quality requirements

At present, the standards implemented by cigarette pack decorating and printing enterprises are corporate standards rather than national standards. This is mainly due to the lower requirements of national standards and the inability to meet the current quality management requirements of enterprises. Such as the printing of "mottle" requirements, the national standard in the provisions of the diameter of not more than 3mm that is qualified, all companies in the implementation of this standard inspections require no more than 0.5mm, and the cigarette factory in the inspection of the packaging products, as long as the product "Dark spots" are considered to be substandard products regardless of their diameter. From this it can be seen that the tobacco factory's demand for product quality is very harsh. The gap in corporate standards enforced by various printing companies is also large. The key point is that the level of detail required to treat similar problems is inconsistent.

In order to meet the strict inspection standards of customers, printing companies began to use quantified measurement data as a reference. During the production and inspection process, they began to use tools such as densitometers and color-difference instruments, each with a price of 30,000 to 50,000 yuan. Samples of the product begin to indicate the specific density and color data of each color as a reference for comparison with the proofs. The overall batch, lithographic field density allows the error ≤ 0.05 (GB = ≤ 0.1 ~ 0.20), gravure printing density allows the error ≤ 0.02, the color error requires color difference △ E ≤ 0.02, these are used as a measure of the color difference of each batch. At present, these data are just for reference. Ultimately, they must be treated differently based on the type of paper, ink, and type of printing process, as well as the final judgment of professionals. In order to make up for the lack of chromatic aberration between batches of live jobs, the use of deep and shallow samples of the proofs in the production process is considered to be in compliance with the color requirements of the proofs as long as the color of the produced product is between the deep and shallow ranges. This greatly eased the excessive pursuit of color differences.

In addition, everyone’s environmental protection requirements for cigarette packaging are getting higher and higher, not only at the level of “odor”, but also at the beginning, requiring that paper, ink, varnish, and post-printing should also be environmentally friendly, which increases the product’s Cost of production.

Increased demand for printed physical samples

Nowadays, the number of tasks required by cigarette brands for proofing is increasing. This may be due to the implementation of a brand development strategy for R&D generation, reserve generation, and use of a generation, or it may be due to the speed with which products can be upgraded. Moreover, the current product proofing requirements are all physical samples, and the gradual requirements are random samples. That is, proofing is required to be demonstrated by actual printing and post-printing processing techniques. It is no longer necessary to describe the processing technology in words or language, which is a reflection of the true product process effect. This is very different from the previous product proofing. In the past, only using computers or printers to print proofs or proofing machines was not a reflection of the actual processing technology, at least not all of the craft's embodiment, just the expression of the decoration and text. Pattern layout, fonts, logos, etc. Color is not the main content at this time. Paper, ink, embossing, stamping, etc. are just words. In this way, only the combination of proofs and textual descriptions can be used to see what the decorator wants to express. This is very detrimental to the expression of the interior decoration itself and the choice and judgment of the decorator's craftsmanship. For this reason, the tobacco factory now demands that the various processes expressed in the decor be truly represented. It is unnecessary to use words to describe the contents of the decorating color, processing technology and paper, etc., which is beneficial to the selected samples and actual processing results of the tobacco factory. Consistent.

Highly reliant on prepress design

The current product life cycle is shortened. This year, 70% of packaging products printed this year will no longer be produced or will not be produced by the original company. This will require new breakthroughs in the upgrading of technology and the use of new materials. It also means that The speed with which new products are introduced is accelerated. Without a relatively complete prepress design and processing system and without a dedicated new product management and R&D department, it is difficult to keep up with the speed of product updates.

With the development of cigarette packs in the direction of multi-processes and multi-processes, the processing of each product requires 10 or even 20 processing steps. The paper deformation, overprinting error, and process matching between each process Other issues must be fully considered in the design process. That is, the designers are required to carefully analyze the requirements of each process on the previous process and the impact on the next process to ensure a reasonable amount of hollowing, bleeding and stacking. Only in this way can we produce high-quality products and ensure reasonable losses in the production process and reduce production costs.

At the same time, prepress design is also a breakthrough in the market. The acceleration of product replacement means that there are a lot of advanced technologies that are fully applied in the field of cigarette package decoration. Prepress design can not only guide the direction of cigarette factory decoration printing, but also in the fierce market competition, due to advanced design concepts, processing technology popular, to meet the individual needs of the product and open the market breakthrough.

In a word, cigarette package decoration printing fully reflects the technical level of the packaging and printing industry, and has become a leader in the packaging and printing industry. It fully applies various printing technologies, printing processes, printing materials, and reasonable process designs to reflect products from the appearance of products. The connotation of strong personality has reached the basic requirements for product packaging. However, with the rapid development of tobacco package decoration printing and the speed of merger and reorganization of the cigarette industry, the scale benefits of cigarette package decoration printing will gradually be reflected. Printing companies that print high-quality products as their business philosophy, and printing equipment with advanced international standards, and complete printing processes, have strong product and process development capabilities, especially technological innovation capabilities, and can rapidly adopt advanced technologies and new technologies. Printing companies of materials will develop rapidly.

Source: Bison