Colorful: The Road to Stereoscopic Printing Practice

Seeking differentiation

It is an indisputable fact that current printing companies are asking for fierce competition. This is something that all companies seeking to develop must face. With the intensification of market competition, the difficulty of sustainable development of enterprises has also increased. While moving according to the market strategy camera, it is critical for companies to grasp operating characteristics and maintain competitive advantage. The reason why colorful is engaged in three-dimensional printing is inextricably linked with its development in recent years. The colorful general manager Meng Zhiwen summarized the company's development into four phases. In the first stage, the introduction and production of Heidelberg equipment corresponds to the capital accumulation stage of the initial business. The second stage is through capital accumulation. Expanding the scale of the company's scale; In the third stage, two Komori four-color printing machines were launched one after another. After the company’s products took a certain share in the market, it was clear that commercial printing was the orientation stage for development; the fourth stage was at this stage. . With the introduction of uV offset presses, Colorful began to enter the packaging printing market with plastic as printing materials, including three-dimensional printing.

It is based on this that colorful and firm walks out a path of differentiation with colorful features. In order to open up the special printing market, optimize the company's live work structure, and set up a special multi-dimensional printing process R&D and marketing promotion project, we will focus on R&D and promotion of this new technology.

Production control experience

Many years of three-dimensional printing production practice, so that colorful has accumulated rich experience. Colorful technology manager Li Peng exchanged his experience with reporters on some technical details.

1. Craft angle

(1) Prepress

According to Manager Li, the color used in the three-dimensional printing is the Creo 800 series image-setter, with an accuracy of 3600 dpi, and more than 400 lines/inch of screens. When selecting the imagesetter for stereoscopic printing, the grating parameters must be fully taken into consideration. Even the photosetters of the same brand have different precision, so the same photosetter must be used for different batches of the same job. And it is necessary to regularly calibrate against the row of machines to ensure high-precision images.

In the production of stereoscopic image film, if the imager's accuracy is set to an integer multiple of the image resolution. To a certain extent, the occurrence of periodic stripes can be reduced because the grating consists of regular stripes, in order to avoid collision. More use of FM screening. If AM screening is used, the screen angle should not be set to 0 when making the film. And 9Oo. When the film is output, the film is facing up. You can avoid the artificial sunraying errors caused by hand-spraying.

(2) Printing

As UV offset printing technology continues to mature, many equipment manufacturers have introduced uV offset printing equipment. Such as Heidelberg, Manroland, KBA and Komori for stereo printing. Application of uV offset press can realize direct printing on the back of the grating. Colorful is currently used Komori L-528 + C + UV printer. Printing directly on the grating material, the size of the paper is from 200mm X 280mm to 720mm X520mm, the maximum printing area is 71Omm×51Omm, the thickness of the printed material is from 0 04 to 0.60mm, and the printing speed is 15500 sheets/hour. When raster printing. The speed of the press is generally limited to 7,000 sheets/hour. The uV curing system of the equipment is a key part of printing control. Different types of inks have different curing characteristics. In order to fully cure uV inks, uV light sources that are suitable for matching need to use uV light sources that are commonly used. There are three kinds of high-pressure mercury lamp metal halogen lamps. The lamp cooling methods include ventilation cooling and water cooling. Select uV When the light source, according to the UV ink and UV light oil curing conditions, but also compared UV lamp irradiation efficiency due to the shorter life of uV lamp. Usually about 1000 hours. So pay attention to replacing the new lamp in production.

we know. The uV light absorbed when the ink is cured. 30% direct light source. 70% from the reflector reflection. Now more aluminum reflectors are used. However, their reflectance varies greatly. Therefore when detecting UV light energy. Not only must the lamp be detected, but it must also measure the total amount of UV light, including reflected light. Stereo printing requires cold reflectors. Guaranteed to reflect only ultraviolet rays and infrared rays. Lower the surface temperature of the printed product by 10. C around.

2. The main consumables

(1) grating material

Three-dimensional printing requires high surface strength of the grating material. Surface strength is not enough to cause poor adhesion. Because the back of the grating is smooth. The affinity for the ink is small. It is easy to pull off the previous color ink when the latter color is overprinted. Therefore, when printing gratings, test the material printability. And the surface of the material is required to be above 40 dynes. In addition. To arrange the color sequence reasonably. Adjust the relevant process parameters in the printing process. To avoid and reduce the occurrence of the above phenomenon.

(2) Ink

Because the material of the grating is a polymer material. Poor absorption. Ordinary ink does not dry on the grating material. So colorful choices use uV ink to print directly. The use of uV curing principle makes the ink photochemical reaction. Instant cure. However, different materials of grating materials need to be matched with different inks, and the factors such as the light-transmitting curing rate of the ink and the hiding property of the ink should be considered comprehensively. Colorful when printing PET material gratings. The use of Gao's RAP series inks makes printability very good.

(3) Plate material

In addition to UV ink positive positive PS version, other positive PS version if not baked processing. The resistance to printing is low, therefore, baking treatment is required (bake condition is 250. C under 6-8 minutes). For negative Ps version, try to use high-strength plate material.

(4) Fountain solution

Because there is no special fountain solution for uV ink printing. Therefore, it is necessary to avoid adding excess gum arabic to the fountain solution, because the gum arabic will react with the uV ink, resulting in failure of the ink blanket pile blanket. Using the alcohol dampening system can reduce the surface tension of the ink and promote the curing effect. And in the printing process, the blank part of the printing plate can be strengthened by the fountain solution to ensure that the lipophilic area is fully ink-receptive, and the hydrophilic area is not inked.

3. Personnel aspects

Because of the three-dimensional printing in the country. Especially in the north, it is not very common. There are few technicians and equipment operators for three-dimensional printing. Companies need to invest a lot of human and material resources and financial resources in the training of operators. If the personnel cannot keep up, three-dimensional printing process control will be It will become a bottleneck in production.

Quality assessment standards

Three-dimensional prints differ from ordinary prints. It has its own set of assessment criteria. Manager Li from both designer and printer perspectives. We introduced in detail the colorful subjective evaluation methods. That is, from the perspective of the three-dimensional clearness matching degree brightness and other aspects.

1. Three-dimensional

The foreground and background of stereoscopic images inevitably produce ghost images. Under the premise of ensuring clarity (ie, ghosting is within the allowable range). The maximum depth from the foreground to the background should be felt by the human eye. it's here. Stereo depth refers to the depth of field of a picture rather than the actual depth of the scene being shot. The evaluation of three-dimensionality is based on this stereo depth perceived by the human eye. The greater the depth of feeling. The better the sense of three-dimensionality.

2. Sharpness

Sharpness is related to the raster nature of the raster image resolution (grating, width, and transparency). Within a specific viewing distance. Can not tell the grating grating line and image pixel stereo image. The higher the clarity. The better the image quality.

3. suitability

The degree of matching between the grating plate and the raster image affects the quality of the stereoscopic picture. Mismatched pictures can make people feel dizzy.

4. brightness

The higher brightness image looks more comfortable. The quality of the image is better and the image is too dark, which will affect the viewing effect and the quality of the image will be worse. Due to the role of the grating plate. Makes the brightness of the stereoscopic image lower. This affects the viewing of the image. The use of high-transmittance grating plates can reduce the brightness loss of printed products. At the same time, when making raster images, the brightness of the images can be adjusted appropriately. To compensate for the loss of brightness.

Three-dimensional printing helps companies take off

Just 2 years. Colorful and successively with Motorola. BMW Audi Canon Sony and other international brand companies. Corporate branding and popularity continue to increase. In 2005. Colorful by the National Printing Technology Standardization Committee as China's three-dimensional printing research and promotion base. Participate in the formulation of industry standards for three-dimensional printing and the development of technologies. It also participated in the three-dimensional printing project commemorating the development of anti-counterfeit printing technology development book covers by the National Banknote Printing and Coinage Corporation, and joined the China Anti-counterfeiting Technology Association as an opportunity to take the lead in the industry to pass the certification of the JCTI International Toy Association. In one fell swoop became the rising star of domestic three-dimensional printing, and obtained the green pass for exploring the international market.

Although the colorful three-dimensional printing reputation in the domestic market. But at this stage, three-dimensional printing is not the main source of colorful profit. Instead, it has played a propaganda effect to increase corporate reputation and expand the printing market. The colorful experience is. While enterprises are pursuing profit maximization, it is not the best policy to simply stay in the pure processing stage in the price war. Brand-quality services and diversified products can effectively enhance the overall competitiveness of enterprises.

Source: Printing Technology