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In recent years, with the increasing environmental requirements of printing inks, thinner and thinner films, and the requirement of printing plants to increase production efficiency year by year, flexo printing has become more and more popular in the field of polyethylene film (LDPE) printing. It has entered a stage of rapid development, and there is a trend of more and more applications in paper, composite film and other printing fields.
Soft polyethylene film prints are widely used in household paper, women's products, beverages, textiles, fruits, food packaging and other fields, and can be printed using a unit-type gravure printing machine or a satellite-type flexo printing machine. In Europe, North America, and South America, these products use almost 100% flexo printing; in South Asia, flexo printing occupies more than 80%; in Northeast Asia, Japan, South Korea, etc. almost all use gravure printing; while China is Flexo printing accounts for 15% to 20%, others are gravure printing.
But compared to gravure printing, which cost is lower? There are many differences in the views of the parties. This article makes some comparisons based on the data accumulated in the actual production of film printing for several years, and hopes to find a relatively accurate answer to guide the selection orientation of domestic enterprises when they add printing machines. By comparing fixed investment of equipment, fixed investment and maintenance cost of printing plate library, printing plate cost and lifespan, printing operation cost, the author concludes as follows: when the order quantity is small, the cost of unit-type gravure printing machine is low ; When the order quantity is large, the cost of wide-format satellite flexo printing machine is low.
1. Comparison of fixed investment of equipment
At present, the mainstream supplier of satellite flexo printing machines is in Europe, such as Germany, Spain, Italy and other countries. The price of a medium-to-high-end 1200mm width 8-color flexo printing machine is between 16 million and 20 million yuan; In Japan and Europe, the price is about 11 to 13 million yuan. It can be seen that a flexo printing machine is more than 50% higher than a gravure printing machine in terms of the investment cost of the printing machine alone.
Moreover, each flexo printing machine needs to be equipped with many devices and spare parts, such as 20 to 30 anilox rollers (70 to 400 l / cm); 40 to 50 sets of printing plate sleeves, 3 to 4 sets of intermediate sleeves, one dedicated Mounting machine, etc. These supporting equipment require an additional investment of 5-6 million yuan. Therefore, the fixed investment of an imported flexo printing machine is approximately equivalent to two imported gravure printing machines.
2. Comparison of fixed investment and maintenance cost of the printing plate library
The flexographic printing plate is a flat sheet photosensitive resin plate, which is light in weight and easy to store. Generally, it is only necessary to separate the printing plates with a foam film, and then use two corrugated cardboards to protect the entire set of printing plates. The flexographic printing plates are generally placed vertically. One square meter of space can store 10 to 20 sets of printing plates. A flexo printing machine has about 800 to 1,000 products in normal turnover every year. It takes about 50m2 to store the printing plates in a general warehouse. . In addition, the anilox roller, plate sleeve, and intermediate sleeve of the flexo printing machine also need to be stored on site, which is about 70-100m2.
The intaglio plate cylinder is made of steel, copper, chromium and other metals. The weight is about 25kg / piece. A set of 8-color plates will exceed 200kg. Therefore, high-level shelves are generally used for the storage of gravure plates, and high-level forklifts are needed for entry and exit. A standard high-level shelf of 500m2 is generally required for a gravure printing machine. Due to the high load-bearing requirements, the gravure library is almost the warehouse with the highest investment.
Whether it is a fixed investment in the warehouse or daily maintenance costs, flexo is much lower than gravure.
3. Comparison of printing plate cost and life
The cost of making a flexo plate depends on the size and circumference of the plate, and the price is 10,000 to 20,000 yuan per set, while the gravure plate is only 8,000 to 12,000 yuan. Moreover, the average life of flexo plates is 900,000 to 1 million impressions, while gravure plates can exceed 1.5 million impressions. In addition, gravure plates can be reused by deplating in the case of severe wear, which is unmatched by flexo plates.
Although these situations are related to the short development time and small scale of the current flexographic platemaking factory, the important reason is that the price of the main raw material of the flexographic plate, photosensitive resin plate material, remains high. The cost of plate material accounts for about 1/3 to 1/2 of the selling price of the printing plate, and currently the photosensitive resin plate material is mainly supplied by two international companies, DuPont and Flint, and its high market share also dominates the flexographic market. price.
Of course, flexo plate-making also has its advantages. The plate-making cycle is short, only 0.5 to 1 day, compared with 3 to 7 days for gravure plate, which can greatly improve the efficiency and meet the flexible delivery requirements of customers.
Fourth, printing operation cost comparison
1. Efficiency
The printing speed of flexo printing is fast. The speed of current mainstream models is as high as 300 ～ 400m / min, which is unmatched by the speed of 80 ～ 150m / min when printing soft film by gravure printing. Taking soft LDPE film products as an example, the pass rate of flexo printing is 5% to 10% higher than that of gravure printing, and the chromatic printing accuracy of flexo printing is as high as 25μm, which is unmatched by the chromatic printing accuracy of gravure printing of 0.3 to 0.5mm. Ink consumption (kg / 10,000 m2) 39.0721.27 unit price (yuan / kg) 32.8850.76 cost (yuan / 10,000 m2) 1284.521079.45 varnish consumption (kg / 10,000 m2) 22.8120.30 unit price (yuan / kg) 25.3627. 56 Cost (RMB / 10,000 m2) 578.45559.46 Solvent consumption (kg / 10,000 m2) 111.6063.94 Unit price (Yuan / kg) 8.139.22 Cost (Yuan / 10,000 m2) 907.34589.51 Total due to the long path of the gravure through the material , Each color is up to 4 ~ 6m, the distance between the color groups of flexo printing is only 40 ~ 60cm; at the same time, the horizontal overprinting problem often encountered in the process of gravure printing (especially soft, stretchable film materials), in soft It hardly appears in India. Therefore, when printing soft and easy-to-stretch film, gravure printing can only choose narrow-width and low-speed printing because of the inaccurate lateral overprinting; flexo printing is high-speed and wide-width printing. The efficiency difference between the two is more than 4 to 6 times.
2. Energy consumption
After calculation, the steam consumption of flexo printing machine and gravure printing machine is basically equivalent. If calculated at an electricity price of 0.68 yuan / kWh, a normal gravure printing machine will consume about 51.4 yuan / h, while a flexo printing machine only costs 20.67 yuan / h. It can be seen that the power consumption of the flexo printing machine is only 40% of that of the gravure printing machine.
3. Ink consumption
Although the current price of flexo ink is higher than that of gravure ink, the consumption of flexo ink is only about half of that of gravure ink, and the consumption of solvent is much lower. Table 1 is the actual production of the same product in gravure and flexo printing.
Table 1 Comparison of ink and solvent consumption for gravure and flexo printing
The gravure flexo printing cost (RMB / 10,000m2) 12770.312228.42 Consumption and purchase cost tracking comparison. According to this calculation, the consumption of ink and solvent in the production of flexo printing is 20% lower than that of gravure printing.
A stable operation of gravure printing machine and flexo printing machine, with an annual output of about 40 million m of web material, based on an average door width of 0.80 m, can produce 32 million m2 of products in a year. According to the calculation of the data in Table 1 (including solvent consumption and solvent contained in the ink), flexo printing can reduce the emission of 61.375kg / 10,000 m2 of solvent to the atmosphere relative to gravure printing, thus calculating a flexo printing machine than gravure printing machine 196.4t / year of less solvent discharge. Therefore, flexo printing is an environmentally friendly printing method.
The mixed solvent for flexo printing is mainly ethanol and contains a small amount of ether solvents; the mixed solvent for gravure printing contains a large amount of isopropyl alcohol and ethyl acetate, and the mixed solvent for gravure printing does not use a large amount of toluene and methyl ethyl ketone . It can be seen that even with the same emissions, flexo printing is more environmentally friendly.
4. Version change efficiency
It takes about 1.5 to 2 hours to replace a set of 8-color printing plates in the gravure printing machine and consume 900 to 1500m of film.
The flexo printing machine needs a set of 8-color printing plates. The gear-driven flexo printing machine takes 2 to 4 hours, and the gearless servo flexo printing machine takes 0.75 to 1.5 hours, and consumes 400 to 600m of film. The latest flexo printing machine with automatic cleaning ink system and automatic pressure control system only needs 0.5 hours or even less time to replace the 8-color printing plate.
5. Consumables consumption
Gravure printing uses the same-direction single-squeegee system with heavy pressure, and flexography uses the light-pressure reverse dual-squeegee system. The flexo-printing blade consumes only about 30% of gravure printing.
Flexo printing uses a double-sided adhesive fixed plate that is not available in gravure printing. In the traditional satellite flexo printing machine system that uses solvent-based inks, 0.55mm thick double-sided adhesive is generally used. The suppliers are 3M, Tessa and other international Brand, the use of double-sided adhesive for each stable operation of flexo printing machine is more than 500,000 yuan / year.
4. Conclusion
Figure 3 Comparison of order volume and production cost
In summary, gravure and flexo have their own advantages. In normal production, the author found through tracking the cost of the same product (as shown in Figure 3): In the case of a small order quantity, the cost of gravure printing is lower, mainly because its plate making fee is cheaper; but with the With the increase in order volume, the advantages of high flexo printing efficiency, low energy consumption, and low ink solvent consumption are becoming more and more obvious. When the order volume exceeds a certain value (500,000 sheets), flexo printing will cost less than gravure printing.
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