As one of the types of carton printing machine equipment, the use of corrugated box printing equipment is becoming more and more popular with the rapid development of society, but there are often some misunderstandings when using corrugated box printing equipment, now let the carton printing machine manufacturers give us a specific analysis.

Myth 1: Use offset film as the final output film

Offset flexible film has a series of advantages such as convenient procurement, economy, and timely supply, and the process conditions are relatively mature. However, offset film has a fatal weakness: the surface is too smooth. The photosensitive resin flex version will release a certain amount of oxygen during the photopolymerization reaction, and only the frosted flexible film can guide this oxygen smoothly, so that the soft film and the plate remain in equal contact and accurately transfer the image. On the contrary, the surface of offset printing soft film is smooth and cannot export oxygen smoothly, resulting in a large gap between the soft film and the plate, causing image distortion, thickening of graphics and text, blurring and other failures. Some plate makers use the method of sprinkling talcum powder, which alleviates these problems to a certain extent, but also leads to a decrease in light transmittance and increases the cloud haze of the film.

Myth 2: The prepress system configuration is unreasonable

Because the special software of flexo printing is relatively expensive, not ordinary small and medium-sized plate making companies can afford it, so only a few overseas companies in China can afford it, while the vast majority of plate making manufacturers have localized according to local conditions. Generally speaking, most of the small-scale plate manufacturers use platform scanners and digital cameras as input devices, and the PC or Apple G3 used in the correction computer, plus phototypesetting and film printers as output equipment. Due to the limitation of the scale of plate making, many domestic manufacturers copy the configuration of offset printing plates, and even use lag technologies such as printout and photography, so that the domestic corrugated box flexo printing technology has been in a low level, only as a substitute for hand-engraved rubber plates, has not yet entered the era of color corrugated box printing, compared with foreign counterparts, we are nearly 10-15 years behind.

Myth 3: The selection of plates is relatively blind

Many plate-making companies do not consider the actual situation of the printing house, such as the model of the printing machine, the thickness of the plate tape, the type of ink used, etc., and blindly follow the crowd. For example, for the printing plate for corrugated boxes, many customers only know about DuPont's very famous TDR plate. TDR is a widely used corrugated printing plate with excellent plate-making performance, but the resolution is not as high as that of a batch of thin plates such as EXL/UXL.

These are some common misunderstandings in the use of corrugated box printing equipment, I hope you can read carefully and avoid these misunderstandings, so that corrugated box printing equipment can be better used!