Flexographic printing

The first patented flexographic printing press was developed in Liverpool in 1890. XX a. At the beginning of the 20th century, printing machines were developed using rubber printing plates and aniline oil-based inks. This led to the name of the process – aniline printing. Until 1920. Most of the printing machines were made in Germany, where the process was called rubber printing.

XX a. At the beginning, the technique was widely used in the US in the production of food packaging. 1940 m. The Food and Drug Administration has classified aniline paints as unsuitable for food packaging.

1951 m. Franklin Moss, then President of the Mosstype Corporation, launched a competition to name a new printing process for readers of his magazine The Mosstyper. More than 200 names were submitted. The Packaging Institute’s Printed Packaging Commission sub-committee has narrowed the choice down to three options:
– permaton process
– the rotopac process
– flexographic process

Most readers of The Mosstyper chose the name of the flexographic process, which was given to it.

Flexographic printing is done using embossed polymer printing plates (clichés) in which the printable areas are raised above the non-printable areas.

The ink is transferred from the ink bath to the anilox roller by means of an ink roller, which evenly transfers a certain amount of ink to the printing plates. The texture of an anilox roller consists of thousands of small, bucket-shaped indentations, the number and size of which (measured in units of lines per inch, lpi) determine the transfer of the ink volume to the printing plate. Excess paint is scraped off the anilox shaft with a knife. The rest is fed to the printing plate, which leaves ink on the surface of the printed material.

Printing CMYK images requires a small amount of ink compared to printing in rich Pantone colours. Higher ink content gives more colour saturation, but at the same time limits the printing of halftones. It is therefore recommended that larger areas of solid colour be covered with PANTONE colours and small areas of halftones (photos) with CMY or CMYK colours.

Advantages of flexographic printing:

– Printing on a wide range of materials is possible
– image forming with a flexible photopolymer that can withstand more than one million impressions
– uses fast-drying inks
– Variety of shaft pitches gives flexibility to adapt to customer needs
– low costs
– enables you to print small print runs profitably