Under the multiple trends of green transformation, capacity upgrading and quality refinement in the packaging printing industry, flexible packaging, with its advantages such as light weight, transparency, strong flexibility and wide adaptability, is widely used in numerous fields including food, daily chemicals, agricultural materials, and medicine, and has become the mainstream form in the packaging market. Simultaneously, the market's requirements for the registration accuracy, production efficiency, environmental performance and substrate adaptability of printing equipment continue to rise.
Traditional printing equipment, due to issues such as expensive plate-making, long production cycle and limited substrate adaptability, is difficult to meet the modern large-scale, high-quality and green production demands. However, the CI flexo printing machine, with its unique mechanical structure design, mature intelligent control system and efficient production mode, has become the core efficient solution in the field of flexible packaging printing and is currently the main equipment for large-scale production of flexible packaging.
I.Core working principle: Establishing a solid foundation for stable printing
The overall production process of the CI flexo printing machine is a continuous closed loop. It is operated in coordination by the tension system, printing system, drying system, and reel feeding and rewinding system, achieving automated continuous printing.
1. Unwinder + Tension Control + Deviation Correction
The master roll unwinds, and the tension control system stabilizes the material flow; EPC edge correction prevents the material from deviating left or right; for film materials, they can be subjected to corona treatment first.
Servo Center Unwinding Unit
2. Single Color Group Printing Unit (Core Principle)
- Ink tank supplies ink, which enters the micropores of the mesh roller
- Scrape blade (Doctor blade) removes excess ink from the surface of the mesh roller, leaving only the quantified ink in the micropores
- Mesh roller contacts the plate roller (with flexographic plates), transferring the ink to the raised graphics on the printing plate
- The substrate passes between the plate roller ↔ impression cylinder, under a light pressure, the printing plate transfers the graphics to the roll material.Printing Unit
Printing Unit
3. Inter-unit Drying
After printing the 1st color, it immediately enters the drying box (Hot Air Drying / IR Drying /LED UV Curing Unit), which must be completely dry to prevent the next color from overlapping and smudging, and then enters the next color group to repeat the above ink transfer process.
After printing the 1st color, it immediately enters the drying box (Hot Air Drying / IR Drying /LED UV Curing Unit), which must be completely dry to prevent the next color from overlapping and smudging, and then enters the next color group to repeat the above ink transfer process.
Heating And Drying Unit
4. Cooling + Rewinding
After the final color is printed, the printed roll material passes through the cooling section before entering the rewinding unit.
- Cooling roller: Removes residual heat from the drying process, helping prevent material deformation, stretching, or ink blocking.
- Rewinding: The printed material is rewound into a finished roll for further packaging or subsequent production processes.
Servo Center Rewinding Unit
II. Core Technology Highlights, Enabling Efficient and High-Quality Production
1. Ultra-high Registration Accuracy, Meeting High-End Printing Requirements
All color groups share the same central press cylinder. The substrate undergoes only one tension path, and the film deformation is extremely small.
Even under high-speed operation, the CI flexo printing machine still maintains stable color registration, with the registration accuracy reaching within ±0.1mm, capable of perfectly reproducing the brand logo, fine text, and high-definition dot patterns. There are no ghosting, no misalignment, and no gradual transition discontinuities. Whether it is short single-piece printing or tens of thousands of meters of batch production, it can maintain uniform quality throughout the process and meet the strict quality inspection standards of mid-to-high-end packaging.
2. High-speed Mass Production Capability, Significantly Improving Production Efficiency
In large-scale production scenarios, production speed and order change efficiency directly determine the enterprise's production capacity and profit level. The CI flexographic printing machine has a maximum mechanical operating speed of 250-350m/min, far exceeding the production speed of ordinary flexographic equipment. The daily production capacity can be increased by several times. At the same time, the equipment is equipped with dual-station non-stop unwinding and rewinding mechanisms, and when the roll material is used up, it can automatically switch to a new roll material without stopping for material change, completely eliminating the production loss caused by traditional equipment roll change stops. The production time is maximally utilized. In addition, the equipment is equipped with an intelligent order formula storage system, which can store thousands of sets of past order speed, temperature, tension, ink volume, etc. parameters. When replicating the same order in the future, parameters can be retrieved in one click, without the need for repeated debugging and calibration, significantly reducing the preparation time for order change and effectively reducing the consumption of debugging materials, perfectly adapting to large-scale, long-term industrial order production.
3. Broad substrate compatibility, achieving multi-purpose operation with one machine
Modern packaging products are diverse, with greatly varying substrate materials, and the compatibility of equipment is extremely demanding. The CI flexo printing press has strong compatibility with substrates, covering various commonly used flexible packaging substrates, including BOPP, PET, PE, CPP plastic films, aluminum foil, aluminum-coated films, etc., as well as special materials such as kraft paper, non-woven fabric, PLA degradable films, agricultural woven bags, etc. Whether it is high-elasticity, easily deformed thermal-sensitive films, or hard-textured, uneven-thickness paper or aluminum substrates, the equipment can achieve stable printing through precise tension and pressure adjustment. One machine can meet the production needs of multiple categories such as food, cosmetics, agricultural supplies, medicine, and environmental protection packaging, helping enterprises reduce equipment procurement costs and improve equipment utilization, and adapt to diversified order production models.
Printing Sample
4. Green drying system, conforming to the trend of environmental-friendly printing
With the tightening of national environmental protection policies and the popularization of global green packaging concepts, low-VOC, pollution-free, and energy-efficient printing has become an industry necessity. The CI flexo printing press is equipped with a partitioned independent temperature-controlled hot air circulation drying system. Each drying area can independently adjust temperature and air volume according to ink type, substrate characteristics, and printing speed. The hot air circulation utilization efficiency is high, energy consumption is low, and drying is uniform. It can perfectly adapt to various green inks such as water-based inks and environmentally friendly solvent-based inks. At the same time, the equipment can be equipped with an LED-UV curing module to achieve instantaneous curing of non-solvent inks, with no harmful substances volatilization throughout the process, low energy consumption, no exhaust gas pollution, and fully complies with international environmental protection emission standards and international food packaging safety regulations, adapting to the green production requirements of high-end food, baby products, and medicine packaging.
5. Intelligent operation and maintenance system, reducing production and labor costs
Equipment intelligence is the core direction of the printing industry's upgrade. The CI flexo printing machine is equipped with a complete intelligent control system, featuring a high-definition touch control human-machine interface, supporting multi-language switching, and having simple and intuitive operation. The equipment is equipped with an online visual inspection system, which can monitor color differences, omissions, dirt spots, and printing registration deviations during the printing process 24 hours a day, automatically record the location and data of the defects, facilitating subsequent sorting and handling, and significantly reducing the pressure of manual quality inspection. At the same time, an automatic ink path cleaning system is equipped, which can automatically clean the ink path pipelines during color change and switch, reducing ink residue and material waste. High-end models support remote fault diagnosis and system upgrades, allowing manufacturers to remotely troubleshoot equipment faults, optimize operating parameters, and significantly reduce equipment after-sales maintenance costs and downtime losses.
III. Diverse Application Scenarios, Covering All Industries' Packaging Needs
Relying on the comprehensive advantages of high precision, high efficiency, wide adaptability, and environmental friendliness, the CI flexographic printing machine has now been widely applied in various flexible packaging production fields, covering all categories of end markets. In the food packaging field, it can be used for snack packaging bags, frozen food bags, heat-resistant packaging bags for steaming and cooking, and packaging of candies and chocolates; in the daily chemical and home care field, it is suitable for soft bags for cleaning products, self-standing suction bags, and soft packaging for cosmetics; in the agricultural materials and industrial field, it can meet the printing needs of fertilizer woven bags, pesticide soft packaging, and agricultural film printing; in the green environmental protection field, it can be adapted to degradable film packaging, kraft paper food bags, and non-woven fabric environmental packaging bags; it can also be applied to pet food packaging, medical soft packaging, and industrial composite rollsheets in various specialized scenarios, with extremely strong market adaptability.
Q1: Why is the CI flexographic printing machine considered an efficient solution for soft packaging printing?
A: The CI flexographic printing machine adopts a single-center large roller structure, with a short film conveying path and constant tension. It solves the problems of film stretching, unstable registration, and high waste rate in traditional printing equipment. The equipment can operate at high speed and stably, has high single-change efficiency, and low wear. It is suitable for batch production of various plastic soft packaging and is recognized as an efficient printing equipment in the current soft packaging industry.
Q2: What soft packaging materials can the ci flexo printing press print?
A: It can be adapted to most mainstream soft packaging substrates, including BOPP, PET, PE, nylon PA, and various composite films. It is widely used for printing production of snack packaging bags, pillow-type inflatable bags, self-standing bags, octagonal-sealed bags, cosmetics soft films, food roll films, etc.
Q3: How environmentally friendly is flexographic printing?
A: Flexo printing is a relatively environmentally friendly printing process in the soft packaging industry. It mainly relies on water-based inks and is also a preferred solution recommended by the EU and Eastern Europe for food packaging. The CI satellite flexographic printing machine can further enhance this environmental advantage.
Q4: Can this equipment meet the production requirements for food packaging in the EU and Eastern Europe?
A: Absolutely. The equipment supports environmentally friendly water-based ink printing, with low VOC content and no solvent residue risks. The drying system is complete, and it can meet EU 10/2011 and EC 1935/2004 food contact material standards, adapting to the compliance production needs of food and snack packaging in Eastern Europe and the EU.
Q5: Compared to intaglio printing, what advantages does the water-based flexo printing process have in the soft packaging export field?
A: Water-based inks are environmentally friendly, have low residues, and low VOC content, comply with EU environmental regulations and PPWR new rules, and have stronger export compliance; at the same time, the plate-making cost is lower, the single-change is faster, and the production loss is smaller. It is currently the mainstream preferred process for foreign trade export soft packaging.
IV. Summary
The CI flexo printing machine, with stable registration accuracy, ultimate production efficiency, wide range of substrate adaptability, environmentally friendly production mode, and intelligent operation system, has perfectly solved the industry pain points of flexible packaging printing. Changhong flexographic printing machine is committed to producing high-quality CI flexographic printing machine. It not only helps manufacturing enterprises significantly increase production capacity, reduce consumables and labor costs, and improve product quality, but also can adapt to various high-end, environmentally friendly, and special material printing needs, helping enterprises meet industry policies and market trends. If you have the need to purchase a flexographic printing machine, please feel free to contact us.
