As the name implies, combined printing is a combination of multiple types of printing. The printing processes of different printing and post-press processing have been completed on the same production line. This is the way of printing (such as plastic film or other printing materials) to complete multiple printing processes.
Combination printing had existed for a long time. The meaning of the combination at the time was not as complicated as it was now. Sheet-fed printing machines had been coated with glazing and printing marks for a long time. To a certain extent, this was also considered as combination printing. . However, the complexity of today's combined printing makes such a simple combination printing pale, and now referred to as the combination printing, which no longer includes these simple "combination" printing.
Today's combination printing is mainly for the production of certain special products, such as lottery tickets, packaging of certain commodities, and for the purpose of processing, the purpose of anti-counterfeiting, and the requirements of printing products, there is a lack of new work and new technologies. . It is a combination of various printing processes and post-printing processes. It is an inevitable trend for the development of large-scale production and an inevitable requirement of the market. Due to the development of technology, the application of computers in the design and manufacture of printing machinery, and the realization of digital process flow, the combination printing has made great progress in recent years, and it has occupied a considerable proportion in the current printing applications.
First, the advantages and applications of combination printing
The emergence and development of combination printing has followed some of the major trends in the development of printing. It is the need and common result of cooperation in many fields such as technology, technology, machinery, electronics, and management science. These include:
1. The need for large-scale production. Combined printing has traditionally been printed or processed on different stand-alone machines. In the relatively backward technology development, it is necessary to deal with many technical problems, such as the beat rate and failure rate.
(1) Beats. Different printing processes have different processing speeds that can be achieved in a single machine. Some printing processes are simple and the speed of completion is fast. However, due to the complexity of the process or problems caused by material properties (such as ink drying), certain processes can be caused. Can not be processed at excessive speed. If you link together processes that have different speeds (that is, different beats), you will inevitably drag the legs of some simple processes and affect the productivity of the entire production line. However, in today's printing, in general, all machines that handle the same material can reach a certain speed limit that is limited by the material, so there is not much problem in achieving the beat.
(2) Failure rate. Faults are also a major problem that has plagued online production in the past. Due to the relatively high failure rate of stand-alone machines in the past, the time and frequency of single-process shutdowns are often one or more orders of magnitude higher compared to today's machinery and equipment. If it is a stand-alone production, the impact on the overall productivity is not great. If the machines with such a high failure rate are linked together, the faults in each step of the production process will come up one after another. As long as some of them go wrong, the entire production line will stop. This has a great impact on equipment utilization. As the failure rate of production stand-alone machines is greatly reduced, online production conditions are now available.
(3) The openness of the system. Online production is the result of many years of hard work by printing equipment suppliers. Similar to the development of the computer industry, the current printing equipment is also a considerable effort on the modular design, making the interconnection between different devices to reduce the very hurdles, such as the beat problem in the past by mechanical is not easy to achieve, now Electronic control is no longer a problem. Many equipment manufacturers are also designed to operate on the basis of other manufacturers' models, so compatibility with other models is one of the important design criteria of some smaller equipment. In addition, the modular design is not only an indicator to ensure the online operation of the machine, but also ensures that the machine can run off-line, which is the choice of the flexibility of the production process.
2. The need of printing process. Different printing processes have different printing characteristics, and these characteristics cannot be replaced by other printing processes in many occasions. Therefore, using different printing characteristics of different printing processes is also one of main purposes of combination printing. For example, some products require the low cost of offset printing. Some products require the ink thickness of screen printing. Some products require special printing materials (such as fluorescent inks, UV coatings, etc.). In order to meet these special needs, different requirements are required. Printing process for printing.
This of course also includes the post-printing process. In combination printing, it is often necessary to add some post-printing processes such as coating, hot stamping, die-cutting, marking, laminating, etc. in order to make the prints have a certain function. . These were achieved in the past after printing on a stand-alone machine and are now done directly on the production line.
3. Anti-counterfeiting needs. Combination printing was first used in the printing of banknotes, securities, and lottery securities. For example, the printing of banknotes has been preceded by engraving of gravure with techniques such as typography and embossing. The use of the characteristics of different printing processes on a printed matter increases the difficulty of counterfeiting and increases the level of anti-counterfeiting.
4. The need for printing products. This is mainly reflected in packaged prints and special prints. This kind of product has many special requirements. In addition to the common bronzing, glazing, and marking, there are some die-cutting, indentation, embossing, etc., as well as variable data printing with new technologies (this type of printing is mainly Inkjet system to complete).
In packaging printing, the combination printing is mostly connected to the back end of the production of the packaging product. In such a linkage, the printing and post-press processing is only a foil. In a huge packaging production line, adding a few printing processes can not be regarded as excessive requirements, so the combination printing is also a matter of course. Although the combination printing is not obvious in such a field, it is a combination of high technical requirements from the printing point of view.
5. The need for management. The management of printing production is now fully computerized. On-line production is the need of printing and processing plants. It is to improve the management level, reduce the labor force, reduce the inventory of semi-finished products, and shorten the printing cycle. (One pass can complete multiple processes of the product.) The need for such, as well as some additional advantages, such as accurate overprinting, waste reduction and so on.
6. The need to print a single product. The unity of producing products is also a reason for the rapid development of combination printing. The printing industry currently seems to be taking two extremes. One is that more and more short-lived versions require more and more printers to be able to cope with the needs of different printing processes. That is, printing companies need to have multifaceted functions; on the other hand, due to the market structure Adjustment, production of a single product can form an advantage in a small production environment, so online, large-scale, specialized is the need of enterprises with large production needs and a single species, using a single machine to produce a relatively fixed number of large production The products, such as bill production, bank savings, etc., are one of the main application areas of combination printing.