Comparison of several common printing methods for corrugated boxes

Corrugated box is a common paper packaging product, which is closely related to our life and production. The printing quality of corrugated boxes not only affects the appearance quality of corrugated boxes, but also affects the sales prospects of packaging products and the image of commodity production enterprises. Therefore, it is particularly important to analyze how to improve the surface printing effect of corrugated boxes, how to choose appropriate printing technology and further reduce the processing cost of cartons. We will discuss these aspects here. I. Processing technology of corrugated board The processing technology of corrugated board is mainly divided into two categories: 1. The production technology of automatic corrugated board production line is widely used, which has the advantages of large production batch, large carton forming quantity and good quality. Corrugated board produced by this process is usually made into cartons by water-based printing, slotting, pasting and molding. The cartons produced by this process are mainly used for transportation and packaging. 2. The production process of semi-automatic corrugated board production line The production process of corrugated board is to print face paper first, and then use corrugated base paper and cardboard to mount it. Corrugated board produced by this process usually adopts die-cutting indentation, nailing and other processes to box. The carton produced by this process has good forming quality and good surface treatment effect. Cartons produced by this process can be used as sales packaging. Second, conventional carton printing methods There are three conventional carton printing methods: flexographic printing, offset printing and screen printing. Flexographic printing corrugated box The conventional flexographic printing corrugated box process is to print directly on corrugated board, using water-based ink, so some people call this process watermark. Flexo printing has the following characteristics: (1) large format. The maximum width of wide flexographic printing machine can reach 2.5m~2.8m, and (2) the price is low. Flexographic printing has high printing resistance and can be reused; Ink prices are also very low. (3) Production can be linked, such as printing, slotting, indentation, box binding (gluing) and binding. (4) The strength of the carton is less reduced. Because flexography is light pressure printing, it has little effect on the strength of corrugated board. (5) The printing accuracy is not high. The number of screening lines for conventional offset printing is 175 lines/inch, while the number of screening lines for flexographic printing cartons is 35 lines/inch to 65 lines/inch, which is a low-precision printing method and is most suitable for printing characters and line drafts. Although the printing quality of four-color images has improved in recent years, it is still limited. (6) It is easy and difficult to make a plate, and it is easy to make text and line drafts, but it is more difficult to make four-color images. (7) The stability of printing quality is not good, mainly because the depth of printing ink is difficult to control. Flexo direct printing technology is suitable for the first kind of carton production technology, which is widely used in carton factories in China at present. 2. Offset printing corrugated box Conventional offset printing corrugated box adopts indirect printing method, that is, first print the carton face paper, and then paste the printed face paper on the corrugated board.