Development of domestic gravure carton technology (I)

We are in an era of integration, including many commercial mergers and technology combinations that take place in all walks of life. This is especially true in the light industry such as beer, beverages and dairy products. Qingdao, which has taken the lead in the acquisition of the flag, currently owns 48 breweries. It has 23 breweries of China Resources Holdings with outstanding capital operation performance. Yankei, with its solid performance, has 13 subsidiaries distributed all over the country, which constitutes a situation in which the world's beer giants present a decent competition. . The re-emergence of the foreign beer once again set off a new round of game climax, Budweiser, Interbru, SAB, Heineken, Ka Shibo continue to write the name of the media. Beer is a large package. Brand beer packaging requires not only ordinary shipping functions, but also product promotion. With the integration of many beverage giants presumed to be national brands, paper packaging as an important logistics unit ushered in new opportunities and challenges.

The concept of a carton only as an outer packaging no longer exists, and today's carton factory has become complicated to supply to product packers. First, after quality inspection, including physical and chemical indicators such as dimensions, graphics, colors, abrasion resistance, anti-skid, and packing performance; Secondly, through commodity inspection, transporters, distributors and consumers will examine the commercial use of the carton with unprecedented picky. These are the market backgrounds for the evolution of carton technology.
The carton-making process is simple. The corrugated box consists of two processes: printing and forming. The printing process equipment includes offset printing, flexo printing, and gravure printing; the molding process equipment includes single-sided machines, cardboard lines, and slotted/die-cut/sticker machines. Printed substrates can be sheet-fed, web, and multi-ply paperboards; paperboard machines can laminate face and non-printing paper. If you print after forming, it is called preprinting; after forming, it is postprinting.
Sheetfed offset printing is a traditional preprinting method. It is currently the main processing method of domestic high-end color carton, offset printing preprinting mode is not large, but the process is complicated. The carton factory needs to configure a four-color full-open offset press (such as Roland 800), single Surface corrugating machine, veneer machine, polishing machine, sticky box machine and die-cutting machine have many processes, low efficiency, and poor environmental safety. Since its rise in the 1990s, flexo printers have developed rapidly and have become a convenient and mainstream method for carton colorization. It is generally composed of three or more color groups and slotted/die-cut groups. It prints ink on the three-layer and five-layer cardboards. This type of carton printing, which is called flexo-printing, requires only two sets of printing methods. Equipment, cardboard lines and wide-format flexo presses. The post-printing process uses flexible photosensitive resin plates to lightly print on corrugated paperboards. The inevitable spread of dots causes the hierarchical printing to be limited to less than 80 lines. The degree of exquisiteness is not as good as offset printing. Most of the post-printing can only be equivalent to the mid-range level of color carton. The high-grade post-printing technology of the UV coating system, such as BOBST's MASTERFLEX flexographic printing machine, is close to the offset printing level, but the machine cost is not affordable for a general carton plant. The most imported flexographic presses in China are from Taiwan, and domestic models such as the South China Sea East and Jingshan light aircraft are also common.
The carton industry in Europe and the United States in the 1980s introduced a new preprinting technology, the satellite web flexo. The machine is dominated by a Central Impression Roll for printing, drying, glazing, and curing of wide webs. The dot printing reaches 150 lines, and the visual effect is the same as the offset fineness. Feeding speed is 150 meters per minute, a six-color preprinting machine with a width of 1200mm can print 400,000 standard 640ml bottled cartons every day (3 shifts), and the production efficiency is 4 times that of a full-open offset press. (To be continued)