Flexographic printing - is printing with convex, flexible printing forms using liquid, fast-drying inks, so flexography is typically convex printing. The raw material (most often paper or film) is installed on the tray of the printing machine, from which it is fed according to a specific scheme - the so-called interlacing - through all the instruments of the printing machine (rollers), printing sections, counter rollers, crosses, etc.
The printing technology is as follows:
Describing the block diagram of a flexographic printing machine, it consists of a feed section for raw material, such as paper or film, located on a spool, several printing sections, a cutting/stamping section and a packing section. Between the sections are a series of specialized rollers designed to direct the web and maintain its correct tension or, in special cases, reverse it.
Directly in front of the first printing section is a scorotron - that is, an attachment for crowning the raw material (if the condition of the raw material requires it).- The flexographic machine is equipped with a number of - horizontally located printing sections one behind the other. Each section is responsible for transferring to the designated area of the printed surface, the color component of the printed design.
The structure of a single section (excluding the rollers designed to maintain proper web tension) is as follows: inkwell with UV ink, ink roller, anilox, printing roller with ink applied on its surface, mold roller, on whose surface the web to be printed moves.
Printing, or the transfer of ink to the surface to be printed, is carried out as follows. Ink from the inkwell is taken up / lifted by the rotary ink roller and returned to the surface of the anilox. Excess ink is removed through a knife called a squeegee. The anilox returns the ink to the polymer stretched on the printing roller. By applying pressure to the molding roller, the printing roller with the polymer transfers the ink in the form of a graphic pattern to a substrate such as printing paper.
This creates a single-color print within one printing section.
The next section similarly applies in exactly the same designated place another color, which is a component of the label's color scheme, or enhancement in the form of gilding or varnishing.
We carry out the printing process on BOBST and MARK ANDY machines, among others.
The whole process is supervised by our experienced printers, ready to carry out any of your projects.