What Is A Flexographic Printing Press?

Flexographic printing press is a device that uses a flexible plate and transfers ink through an anilox roller to complete the printing process. The following is a detailed introduction

1. Working principle
Flexographic printing press uses fluid ink with strong fluidity. The ink is transferred to the image and text part of the printing plate by the ink fountain rubber roller and the anilox roller and inked. Then the pressure roller applies printing pressure to transfer the ink on the printing plate to the substrate, and finally the printing process is completed through the drying surface.

2. Classification
According to the arrangement of the printing part, flexographic printing presses can be divided into three types: stacked, satellite and unit:

Stacked flexographic printing press: independent printing units are stacked up and down, arranged at one or both ends of the main wallboard of the printing press, or various color printing units are installed on the frame. Each printing unit is rotated by a gear installed on the main wallboard. Stacked flexographic printing presses can print 1 to 8 colors, but usually 6 colors. Its advantages include single-color and multi-color printing, a wide range of printing materials, strong post-printing processing capabilities, and suitable for short-run live printing.
Satellite flexographic printing press: Each printing unit is installed between two wall panels around a common impression cylinder. The printing material is printed around the common impression cylinder for color printing. Because the gears are directly driven, whether it is paper or film, even without the addition of special control devices, it can still be accurately overprinted, and the printing process is stable, and it is often used to print color products. However, the material can only be printed on one side at a time after passing through the printing press, and the distance between the printing units is too short, and the ink is easy to be stained when it is not dry.
Unit flexographic printing press: It consists of printing units that are independent of each other and arranged horizontally and driven by a common power shaft. The unit flexographic printing press only supports one printing unit for each pair of additional plates, so it can be designed to adapt to different drum surfaces. Its main advantages include convenient assembly and installation of the unit, easy post-printing processing, suitable for short-run live printing, and changing the running route of the material belt by the guide roller to achieve double-sided printing at one time.
3. Features
Simple machine structure and convenient operation: The machine structure of the flexographic printing press is relatively simple, so it is easy to operate and easy to repair and maintain. The price of a flexographic printing press with the same function is about 30%~50% of that of an offset or gravure press.
Strong adaptability to printing materials: satisfactory printing effects can be obtained from 0.22mm plastic film to 10mm thick corrugated cardboard.
Low embossing force: about 19.6~39.2N/cm2, especially suitable for printing on corrugated paper and other substrates that cannot withstand excessive pressure.
Low printing cost: the main reasons are the low price of the machine, low plate making cost, low paper loss rate during printing, and the production cost is 30%~50% cheaper than gravure.
Good quality of printed products: the use of anilox roller short ink path ink delivery system not only simplifies the structure of the ink delivery system, but also can achieve quantitative control of the film thickness. The breakthrough in high-performance photosensitive resin plate technology has greatly improved the resolution of the printing plate and the reproducibility of the dots (up to 1%~95%). Flexographic printing can achieve 300 lines/in color layered draft printing, and the printing effect is comparable to offset and gravure printing.
IV. Structure
Flexographic printing machines are mainly composed of unwinding and feeding parts, printing parts, drying parts and rewinding and receiving parts. Modern flexographic printing machines generally have tension control, edge control, registration control, printed product observation and other measurement and control devices as well as mechanical status monitoring and fault diagnosis systems. In addition, in order to expand the scope of application, some flexographic printing machines are also equipped with glazing, laminating, hot stamping, slitting, die-cutting, punching, silk screen and gravure printing units, etc., to become flexographic joint production lines.