In 1853, the United States began to obtain a patent for rubber plates.

In the 1860s, simple printing presses appeared, using aniline dye inks and elastic rubber as plate materials - aniline printing or rubber plate printing.

Aniline dye ink is very bright, but it is easy to fade, and toxic, and has been replaced by dyes or pigments that do not fade and have strong light resistance.

In 1952, the 14th Packaging and printing Conference replaced "flexographic printing" with "aniline printing".

In recent decades, there has been great development in the four main aspects of printing plate, ink, ink delivery system and printing press, and it has become another big printing process after letterpress, lithography and gravure.

The use of an elastic raised image plate, the plate can be glued to the plate cylinder, the plate is inked by a metal mesh roller carved with ink holes. The ink transfer roller is controlled by another ink roller or ink scraper. Liquid and grease inks can be transferred to virtually all types of substrate materials.

The ink transfer in flexographic printing process is very simple, low viscosity, high fluidity of the ink filled into the small inking hole of the mesh roller, the excess ink is scraped by the scraper, left in the ink hole of the mesh roller, and then transferred to the flexographic relief image, when the ink area on the plate and the substrate contact, it forms a "lip print". The transfer of ink is accomplished by lightly pressing the lip print.

In the current fierce competition in the market in an invincible position, but how to use a small investment to quickly improve the printing quality is everyone's concern, and flexographic printing has entered a new period of development, the author today also introduced the difference between different plates and ISGO flexographic materials.

Comparison of flexographic plate with offset printing and gravure printing:

Type of flexographic plate:

Rubber plate: Rubber plate is mainly natural rubber and synthetic rubber. There are three important technical parameters of the rubber plate, that is, the hardness of the plate, the type of rubber and the thickness of the plate.

Rubber plate is divided into: hand*carved rubber plate - the plate making process in the 1930s, and hand-carved rubber stamps.

The characteristics of plate making method: This plate making method is mainly used for simple parts, with the advantages of convenience, fast, low cost and so on.

The production personnel are required to be skilled and have rich experience, the quality of the printing plate is not high, and in addition to a few rough live parts, it has basically been eliminated.

Dycril plate:

Photopolymerized letterpress plate is made by exposure and rinsing using photosensitive dycril plate as material.

The main advantages are simple plate making process, fast loading speed, high printing resistance and good ink transfer performance. Compared with the cast rubber plate, its plate making time is only a fraction of that.

Next, the author begins to introduce ISGO's recently popular washed flexible dycril plate!

Cosmolight is a washed flexo plate developed using the technology accumulated by Printight nylon series washed sheets.

Because organic solvents are not used when washing the plate, the plate can be washed in a pollution*free environment. Reduce the burden on the Earth's environment.

At the same time, it has the two characteristics of washed development and water-resistant ink. In addition, it can also apply UV ink and solvent ink.

Cosmolight features:

1. Use tap water and a small amount of active agent (detergent) in 400℃ warm water without solvent can wash the plate.

2. Because the use of tap water obviously gets rid of harmful chlorine gas series solvents or other alternative solvent development methods, the working environment is greatly improved, and the obligation to protect the earth's environment is done.

3. With excellent image resolution and reproducibility, it can print clearly.

4. Plate material durable (solvent printing ink, excellent wear resistance, climate change resistance), water*based ink, alcohol ink, flexographic ink are all suitable.

5. Better inking, better ink transfer, better printing effect.

6. Water and UV ink can also be used for glazing, good coating and long brush resistance.

7. Because the water*based washing plate will not swell, the thickness is uniform and the overprinting is accurate, and the printing can be done immediately after the plate making.

8. In particular, it has excellent ozone resistance, good plate setting, and will not crack.

TOYOBO washed dycril plate is the first in the market to develop washed flexible plate, Cosmolight, our advanced photosensitive resin plate can be washed with water plate material, whether in the wash ink, solvent and UV ink can be durable printing.

This innovative washable flexible resin version, due to the use of tap water development, does not need to use harmful solvents development, no smell, greatly improving the working environment, and has a significant contribution to the earth's environmental protection and ecology.