Current situation and development of the hottest c

Current situation and development of cigarette packaging (V)

printing technology characteristics of domestic cigarette packaging

1. The development of single gravure printing to offset printing and combination printing

offset printing has always occupied an absolute dominant position in the field of publishing and commercial printing. In particular, high-end prints such as picture books can only be completed by offset printing. This is because with the development of offset printing machine today, the technology has been very mature, and it has incomparable advantages in image detail reproduction compared with other printing methods. Compared with gravure printing, offset printing plate making has the remarkable characteristics of short cycle and low cost. At present, when cigarette factories frequently change cigarette bag design, constantly launch new products, and the sales volume of new products is small, offset printing machines show high flexibility, which is the main reason why offset printing accounts for an increasing proportion in cigarette bag printing in recent years

especially in the field of printing in China, offset printing has been very popular, accounting for the largest proportion in various printing methods, and is the most important printing method in the field of publishing and packaging printing in China. Therefore, in China, the installed capacity of offset printing machines is the largest, with the best hardware environment and software conditions. Heidelberg, Manroland, gaobao, Komori, Mitsubishi and Akiyama, the six major international suppliers of offset printing machines, have increased their sales in China in recent years. Most of the introduced sheet fed offset printing machines are used for packaging and printing. Although many large and medium-sized cigarette package printing enterprises have purchased web gravure printing machines or flexographic printing machines, they all take offset printing as one of their main businesses, or for printing small and medium-sized cigarette package products, or for printing packaging products in other sectors of society (such as cigarette boxes, cosmetic boxes, medicine boxes, etc.)

however, in recent years, with the intensification of competition in the tobacco industry and the continuous improvement of cigarette box design, a single offset printing can no longer meet the requirements of exquisite cigarette packs. Therefore, the technology of printing cigarette packs by combination of offset printing, gravure printing, silk, flexography and so on quietly rose, and became popular overnight in the north and south of the river. The result of combined printing has pushed the grade of cigarette packs to an unprecedented level. At the same time, it also gives full play to the characteristics of several printing methods, learning from each other's strong points to complement each other's weak points, leading the way. Offset printing is used to print plus images and gradient patterns. Taking advantage of the thick ink layer and stable ink color of gravure printing, large-area field and spot colors, gold silver, pearlescent colors and various imitation metal etching inks are printed. If you need special finishing effect, you can also add silk printing process, such as frosting, ice flower, crystal, wrinkles, etc. Therefore, the combination of offset printing, gravure printing and silk screen printing has brought unprecedented strong artistic visual effects to cigarette packs. Coupled with the post-processing technology: Gold sweeping, UV local glazing, bronzing, bulging, etc., it makes the cigarette bag even more beautiful and amazing

2. the materials used are becoming more and more high-grade

because the four or five types of cigarette factories are unprofitable, how to promote the first and second types of cigarettes to the market, create brands and open sales has been the dream of all cigarette factories in recent years. As the soft pack "Zhonghua" is the number one representative of high-end cigarettes in China, its elegant packaging design of typical Chinese cigarettes has become the object of imitation by cigarette factories. As a result, when launching their own top-grade cigarettes, cigarette factories mostly adopt soft packaging design, and the materials used are almost all laser holographic aluminum foil paper, which is undoubtedly the highest price among all papers. For example, the blue soft bag lotus king, treasure Nanjing, treasure Baisha, treasure jiaozi, sunshine jiaozi, blue soft bag Baxi, century boutique lotus king, hard box lotus king, Honghe V8, Guiyan, special alcohol gold medal Yunyan, etc. all use plain laser aluminum foil. The outer packaging is so exquisite, and the interior is not backward. Many tipping papers used in these cigarettes are bronzed. All these make the cost of packaging and printing increase unprecedentedly. Of course, the price of these cigarettes is not cheap, both at 20-80 yuan/box, or even higher

3. There are more and more patterns in the post-processing process of cigarette boxes

in addition to the increasingly complex printing process and more exquisite materials, the post-processing process is also unwilling to be lonely, with more and more patterns and more complex operations

①. Gold sweeping

a process between bronzing and gold printing, which is characterized by high speed and low cost, and can achieve ideal results regardless of the thickness and area of the text. Gold powder also has a variety of colors, such as gold, silver, red gold, red copper, green, brown, lemon, malachite blue, etc., and also has different particle sizes, showing different visual effects. In foreign countries, there is also a popular gold powder with diamond like effect. This gold powder has four particle sizes and 10 colors, which can make the whole picture and text show a group of diamond patterns under the light, and reflect the unique effect of colorful light. Representative cigarette bag: Red 'Huangshan'

②. Holographic hot stamping

laser hologram, otherwise it will affect the future scientific research. The data is made according to the principle of laser interference and the method of spatial frequency coding. Laser holograms have been used in the field of anti-counterfeiting since the 1980s because of their magnificent colors, obvious layers, vivid images, variable optical transformation effects, and high information and technology content. The latest OVD technology has been significantly different from the widely used hologram hologram, and some holograms have machine recognition functions. The mechanism of holographic hot stamping is to heat and melt the hot melt adhesive layer and separation layer on the holographic hot stamping material with a global advanced polymer composite market value of US $12.12 billion through the heated hot stamping die on the hot stamping equipment. Under a certain pressure, the full grating stripes of the information layer of the hot stamping material are separated from the pet substrate, so that the aluminum foil information layer and the hot stamping surface are bonded and integrated to achieve a perfect combination

there are three types of holographic hot stamping: A. random hot stamping of ordinary holograms; B. Special version hologram random ironing; C. Special hologram positioning iron. The third kind of special hologram positioning iron has appeared frequently on high-end cigarette packs in the past two years. It refers to the accurate hot stamping of the hologram of a specific part of the holographic anti-counterfeiting hot stamping anodized onto the specific position of the cigarette bag through photoelectric recognition on the hot stamping equipment. Hologram positioning ironing technology is very difficult, which requires not only printing plants to be equipped with high-performance and high-precision special positioning ironing equipment, but also high-quality special positioning ironing anodized aluminum. The production process should also be strictly controlled to produce qualified cigarette packaging products. Due to the high anti-counterfeiting performance of positioning hot stamping marks, they are used in banknotes, important certificates and other occasions. Representative cigarette packs: the best "Yunyan" and "Lotus king"

③ soft paper embossing and positioning ironing

due to the popular soft packaging form of high-end cigarettes, the gorgeous post-processing technology originally mature on white cardboard has also been transferred to soft paper. Yunnan Qiaotong packaging and printing 4 Discussion and prospect Co., Ltd. was the first to try in this area and achieved great success. This process completes bronzing and embossing in one process. The product has the characteristics of full bronzing, fine graphics and texts, beautiful appearance, and no embossing and skewing. However, this process is technically difficult, and the requirements for the accuracy of hot stamping plate, holographic film and hot stamping machine are particularly high, and all operation indicators must be very strict. Because of this, it is difficult to be imitated and has a high degree of anti-counterfeiting, representing cigarette packs: "Fu" and Huize "Little Panda"

④. Ironing before printing process

in order to highlight the specific patterns and logos on cigarette packs, some printing houses have introduced a new process in recent years, that is, hot stamping anodized aluminum first, and then printing patterns on anodized aluminum. The effect produced makes the theme of cigarette packs more vivid and lively. The key to this process is that the anodized hot stamping must be firm. During printing, anodized must not be pulled down by the printing ink. This will not only affect the quality of cigarette packets, but also the anti pulled electrochemical aluminum will soon accumulate on the blanket, which may cause the loss of image points at least, or the failure of local image printing. With the operation of the machine, the electrochemical aluminum powder will also be transferred to the ink roller system to accelerate the wear of the ink roller. Therefore, according to the characteristics of printing paper, this process should select appropriate anodized aluminum to ensure that anodized aluminum can be firmly attached to the paper surface. Representative cigarette packs: soft pack "national guest", soft pack blue "eight happiness", blue "stone forest". When the load is greater than the set value of "initial value of seeking compliance", the calculation of compliance begins

⑤. Micro embossing process

this process uses a micro embossing plate to emboss various required fine lines on the image and text part of aluminum foil paper, and the products obtained have the effects of hot stamping and embossing, with strong metal texture. Representative cigarette packs: soft and hard pack "state guest", soft pack "state pack", soft pack blue "eight Xi", soft pack "Lotus king"