Development status and future trends of gravure printing technology

After nearly 30 years of continuous development, China's flexible packaging industry has achieved brilliant results and has become the largest and fastest growing industry in the world. The huge population base is a strong support for the consumption of flexible packaging products. Many of the world's first and second-largest flexible packaging companies have seen this. They have set up institutions in China to participate in the market in the form of sole proprietorship or joint ventures in order to occupy a certain market share. At the same time, the equipment manufacturing, plate roll processing, substrate, ink and other industries that are compatible with the flexible packaging industry have also flourished.

In the past two years, with the expansion of scale, problems such as disorderly competition, inferior quality, rising material prices, prominent environmental protection issues, and high labor costs have emerged, and the meager profit era of the flexible packaging industry has arrived in advance. The diversification and individualization of market demand have further intensified competition in the flexible packaging market. Orders for citrons of more than 100,000 meters have been few, and small orders of less than 10,000 meters have become the norm for the production and operation of flexible packaging enterprises. The attention is getting higher and higher, and efforts are made to reduce the waste loss in the production process, reduce the overall energy consumption of the whole machine, and reduce the cost per unit of product, thereby improving its market competitiveness. Market changes put forward higher requirements for the comprehensive technical performance of printing equipment, especially in terms of production efficiency, production loss, environmental protection, energy saving and emission reduction, personal safety, and personnel quality.

As the main printing machine of the flexible packaging industry, the gravure printing machine has an annual sales volume of about 1,000 units in the Chinese market. The above market changes indicate that the domestic gravure printing machine will face major transformation and upgrading, and will adapt to the market demand and move towards “intelligentization”. Humanized, digital, flexible, and green.

Development status of gravure printing technology

In the past development stage, the domestic gravure printing machine has made great progress in the following aspects, and has gradually integrated with developed countries and regions in Europe and America, and has gone hand in hand.

1. Reduce production preparation time and increase production efficiency

With the normalization of short-running jobs, controlling and continuously reducing production lead times is becoming increasingly important for flexible packaging companies.

In order to reduce production preparation time and improve production efficiency, domestic gravure printing machine manufacturers are eager to end users, increase scientific research and development efforts, accelerate industrialization steps, and develop a series of new technologies, such as sleeve-type rubber rollers, fast. Change scraper, shaftless drive, ventilated detachable high-efficiency energy-saving oven, multi-function service trolley, plate roller online automatic cleaning device, etc.

The development and application of these technologies has greatly promoted the reduction of total time and total cost. Through the use of the above technology, flexible packaging companies can control the change time of one hour or so, greatly improving the utilization rate of equipment.

2. Reduce material loss and save costs

With the advent of the meager profit era of the flexible packaging industry, the cost of materials such as substrates, inks and adhesives accounts for almost 75% of the price of flexible packaging. It can be seen that the increase or decrease of any kind of material consumption will have a great impact on the profit of flexible packaging enterprises. Therefore, it is necessary and feasible to ensure profit by reducing material loss.

In the process of gravure printing, the factors affecting material loss mainly include the following aspects: overprinting loss during the process of changing the order, overprinting loss during the process of refueling, overprinting loss during the process of lifting speed, and downtime maintenance loss caused by equipment failure. Additional loss of ink and solvent caused by the ink tank structure. For the above various losses, the following technologies can be used to solve the problem.

(1) Reduction measures of overprint loss during the change of order

The production management system (one-click recovery function) records the best printing status (printing tension, printing temperature, blade position, printing pressure, etc.) of each order in the past, and can be directly called when changing orders, which can greatly reduce the loss.

(2) Measures for reducing the overprint loss during the refueling process

1 Control the length of the tail in the high-speed non-stop cutting, ≤400mm is appropriate.

2 Optimize the cutter structure, upgrade the cutting motion control program, and reduce the tension change.

3 Fully automatic cutting process, on the basis of ensuring the cutting success rate, make the residual material residual material ≤10m, reducing the waste of printing substrate.

(3) Measures for reducing overprint loss during lifting speed

1 There is a feed system speed of the guide roller and the speed of the printing substrate.

2 The strict requirements of the dynamic balance of the guide roller and the guide roller starting torque ≤ 1g?mm.

3 Considering the evacuation of the airflow on the surface of the guide roller and the disturbance to the printing substrate, the material can be smoothed at a high speed.

4 Improve the yield of overprint, the traditional mechanical shaft drive gradually withdraws from the market, and the higher precision electronic shaft drive becomes the mainstream.

(4) Measures for reducing the downtime maintenance loss caused by equipment failure

Use remote diagnostics to reduce repair time when the user's printing equipment fails.

3. Improve equipment safety performance and ensure personal health and safety

With the increase in the export volume of domestic gravure printing machines and the improvement of the requirements of domestic high-end users, the requirements of international users for EHS (environmental, health and safety) have been popularized in domestic gravure printing machines. The pursuit of overprinting accuracy has risen to reduce or eliminate environmental hazards. The equipment has minimized the health and personal accidents of operators. The EHS FIRST required by foreign users is slowly accepted and converted by domestic high-end users. For their requirements on the equipment. The current level of domestic gravure printing machine technology is constantly being improved based on these requirements. For example, a series of safety protection technologies such as carbon dioxide fire extinguishing, explosion protection of electrical cabinets, explosion-proof motors around ink tanks, explosion-proof windows, air duct wind pressure detection, safety fences, and safety gratings for receiving and discharging materials have been applied in domestic gravure printing machines.

4. Application of VOCs exhaust gas treatment device on gravure printing machine

Under the strong promotion of the national environmental protection policy, green environmental protection has become the main theme of the printing and packaging industry. There are two main technologies for waste gas treatment used in gravure printing. For the mixed solvent, the RTO regenerative combustion device is mainly used; for a single solvent or a single type of solvent, the recovery device is mainly used, and the environmental protection function can be realized not only when the total amount of the solvent exceeds 1000 tons, but also the recycled solvent can be recycled. The benefits are very impressive.

In order to reduce the investment cost of the exhaust gas treatment, the drying system of the gravure printing machine needs to be added to the wind reduction enrichment device or the LEL circulation system.

Development trend of gravure printing technology

In the past few years, gravure printing machines have made remarkable achievements. In the future, the development concept of gravure printing machines is undergoing major changes. Product design will pursue “short-cut, humanized and environmentally friendly”, and the product structure will be “ Flexible, modular, and intelligent.

1. High precision and high efficiency development

Through system optimization and upgrade, structural adjustment and improvement, the gravure machine tension control is accurate within the range of 0.1N. At the same time, the high-precision fiber-optic electric eye recognition is configured to reduce the cumbersome process and meet the high-precision overprint of gravure printing.

To achieve the repetitive order retrieval, only one key reset, the plate roller, scraper, tension, pressure and other related parameters can be directly restored to the optimal state, instead of manual repeated operation, reducing the intermediate process and achieving efficient operation.

2. Automation, intelligent development

With the advent of the Internet era and the continuous improvement of the industrial level, high-speed gravure printing machines will surely achieve step-by-step improvement and breakthrough in automation and intelligence, mainly in the following aspects.

(1) Application of intelligent color control system

The color proofing of the gravure printing machine is a difficult point in the current stage. The fully automatic color control system will be introduced into the gravure printing machine, which will be completed once from the ink formulation generation to the adjustment. The automatic ink dispenser, color control system and color density detection are all intelligent. The module is connected and controlled, which can save users more than 1000 meters of material loss.

(2) Application of industrial robots

The printing and packaging industry is a kind of hazardous work, and fewer and fewer people are willing to operate the equipment. This makes the whole industry difficult to work, high labor costs, heavy burden on the enterprise, and saving labor is becoming more and more important for printing and packaging enterprises. Therefore, industrial robots are used instead of labor. Operation is the direction in which the gravure press develops.

During the process of changing the order, the printing plate roller, the cleaning and replacement of the ink tank, and the cleaning of the ink roller are very heavy and endanger the health of the operator. The industrialization and automation of the automatic washing machine and the ink tank cleaning machine have reduced the standard operation of the four-person operation to two, which has greatly reduced personnel input and reduced personnel injuries. In the future, such work is expected to be replaced by industrial robots.

(3) Interconnection of equipment and intelligent production systems

The gravure printing machine is equipped with a network port PLC and a large number of intelligent sensing devices to realize interconnection with the intelligent production system, and provide support for automatic collection, delivery and analysis of product process parameters, so that product quality is guaranteed. At the same time, the intelligent production system can also monitor the operating status of the equipment (equipment failure, quality alarm, etc.) in real time, and statistically analyze the energy consumption of the equipment (water, electricity, gas).

In addition, the gravure printing machine accessories (plate rolls, rubber rollers, etc.) can be quickly identified by RFID technology and automatically replaced by supporting equipment.

(4) Interconnection of equipment and printed product intelligent defect detection

The intelligent defect detection of printed products has been favored in the past two years, but the level of automation and intelligence is not high, and the skill requirements of operators are high. It is impossible to deal with the problems of equipment linkage, and only stay at the level of defects found. It was found that the treatment also produced waste products of several hundred meters. After the printed product intelligent defect detection and equipment are interconnected, after the defect is found, the device automatically processes the defect and analyzes the defect type. From rapid processing of defects to early prevention, the yield of printed products is greatly increased.

(5) Interconnection between the device and the remote operation and maintenance of the cloud

At present, the gravure printing machine has been gradually integrated into the network, and interconnected with the cloud remote operation and maintenance system. Through the analysis and judgment of the industrial software, checking the operation status of the equipment can not only solve the problems that have occurred or are occurring, but also predict the problems in advance. The possibility of occurrence. For complex technical service issues, it can be processed by the professional technical experts through the cloud.

(6) Automated application of new volume preparation

Fully automatic winding device: The control signal of the machine up and down roll device is connected with the factory's manufacturing execution system (MES). The system automatically triggers the loading and unloading task. The warehouse automatically matches the materials and dispatches the AGV to the upper and lower roll stations. Fully automatic roll-up, reducing personnel participation and preparation time, and improving production efficiency.

The industrial robot automatically recognizes the new coil head, pastes the tape, realizes the unmanned preparation of the coil, and the MES issues the production task, and the equipment completes the automatic cutting according to the instruction.

3. Diversified development of equipment functions

The gravure printing machine has more diversified functions, such as wire coating, composite, variable data printing, die cutting, cross cutting, and indentation.

Under the new market situation, domestic gravure printing machine manufacturing enterprises will face major transformation and upgrading, and look forward to the realization of the "green environmental protection, energy saving and high efficiency, automatic intelligence" gravure machine dreams in all aspects of the coordinated industrial chain.

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