Flexo Printing Machine

Where To Use Flexographic Printing Machines?

Flexography is a used for long time in printing industry, especially in packaging industry for a wide variety of applications. During the last thirty years, this technology has undergone tremendous changes to withstand other technologies on the test of quality, speed, flexibility and cost. As the name reflects, the technology is very flexible and offers versatile printing machines to suit different applications like printing labels, tags to printing multi-color images and texts. It will be interesting to overview the advantages of flexography printing technology to realize its applications and benefits for various printing applications.

Know How Flexographic Printing Works 

This direct rotary printing technique incorporates a flexible relief plate with a raised image of design to be printed on the substrate. This plate impresses the design on the substrate in the printing process. The plate can be created using three methods like exposing polymer to ultraviolet rays, molding or computer aided laser etching. Once the plate is created, it is mounted on the cylinder and then it is placed into the press for printing. This basic procedure involves in any flexo printing machine. Its main advantage is its efficiency in large scale printing of images or texts. Here are some other prominent advantages of this technology –

·         Versatility in printing on a wide variety of surfaces – Flexographic printing allows printing on porous as well as non-porous surfaces. This advantage has led to countless applications of flexo printing machine for printing on papers, cloths, to cardboard or even coloring tiles.

·         Wide variety of quality inks available for flexographic printing – Earlier there were limited options for printing surfaces as well as printing inks. The water based inks used to take some time to dry and this led the need of commercial dryers to avoid smudging. However; today there is a wide variety of quality inks that dry quickly or even in no time. These inks are suitable for printing on different surfaces.

o    The solvent based inks are suitable for plastic surface and widely used for printing wallpapers or other commercial uses. 

o    Ultraviolet curing inks are preferred for printing on cellphone or plastic articles.

o    Water based inks are ideal for porous surfaces like cardboard and paper.

o    Chemical curing inks need two step procedures but suited for some specific applications.

·         Printing consistency – The plate is useful in printing millions of prints. The quality of printing is maintained for first print to last print. Whether you use plastic or polymer plate, excellent printing consistency is achieved in flexographic printing. So, no need to rebuild the plate over time and it also avoids irregularities and variance in the designs.

·         The best suitable technology for solid color printing – As the ink used in flexo printing machine cures instantly, multiple layers of colors can be applied quickly where the need of saturation and richness of solid color printing is to be achieved.

Food industry package printing is one of the prominent applications of flexographic printing because of its compliance to governmental norms. Apart from that, flexographic printing machines are widely used in plenty of commercial and consumer applications.