Jul. 24, 2023
For wine box packaging, the structure and pre-press design are critical, but the design of the production process is also inseparable from the quality of the wine box packaging. How to produce wine box packaging that is well received by customers?
Printing art
Offset printing can print exquisite multi-level patterns and realize multi-color overprinting, but it is easy to produce color difference between batches, which is difficult to control; gravure ink layer is thick and full, and the color is stable; screen printing ink layer is thick, with good hand feeling, strong three-dimensional effect and various effects; flexo printing process is flexible, but multi-color overprinting is not its strong point. Wine box packaging designers should comprehensively apply various techniques to maximize strengths and avoid weaknesses.
For example: Our company has 8-color printing machines, 7-color printing machines, and one single-color gravure printing machine. Now we need to produce wine box packaging surface paper. The process requires printing C, M, Y, K, spot color blue, spot color gold, full-page pearl, and full-page matte oil. Among them, the spot color blue needs to be printed on a large area of dark solid, and the matte oil needs to be completed by a printing unit.
There are three choices in process design: ① direct printing with 8-color printing machine; ② printing spot color blue with single-color gravure printing machine, and then printing with 7-color printing machine; ③ direct printing with 8-color printing machine, but change the process design to: C, M, Y, K, spot color gold, spot color blue, spot color blue, full-page matte oil (add offset printing pearl ink to matte oil).
It is not difficult to see from the above that the first option is not good, because it needs to use spot color blue to achieve a large area of dark solid color, and only one unit of offset printing machine is used for printing. The ink layer is not thick enough, the hue is not saturated, and the expected effect cannot be achieved; the second option is better, but it increases the process; the third option is better. Printing spot color blue by two units not only ensures the quality, but also reduces the investment in processes and equipment, and shortens the production cycle. However, general workshop operators and quality control personnel lack this kind of process integration design ability, which needs to be completed by professional designers.
Post-press process
In the printing industry, lamination is often used to protect printed products, enhance the wear resistance of printed products, and protect the corners and edges of printed products. Now a new laminating process using PUR adhesives has been introduced, but the supporting machines are expensive. At present, traditional water-based adhesives and oil-based adhesives are mainly used in the industry, but printed products are easily deformed after laminating, which brings trouble to the subsequent process and high loss. The screen printing process after lamination generally requires the surface tension of the film to be above 38mN/m, otherwise the adhesion of the screen printing ink will deteriorate and the ink will easily fall off; the matching requirements for hot stamping materials after lamination will also increase accordingly.
The author believes that the most stupid way to protect printed products is to cover them, because although this method can protect the corners and edges of printed products from whitening due to paper explosion and ink explosion, all water-based adhesives and oil-based adhesives are not resistant to friction. In contrast, pre-coated film coating can also improve the wear resistance of printed matter, but it is expensive. This requires a multi-process integrated design for printed products.
The assembly cost of wine box packaging production accounts for about 30% of the total production cost. Small batch (200-500 pieces) trial production before mass production can avoid risks. Optimizing the selection of semi-finished accessories, cutting dies, molds, etc. can greatly improve the efficiency and reduce costs.
In addition, after the small batch printing of wine box packaging is completed, different packaging functional testing standards should be formulated according to different customers, products and packaging and transportation methods, including aging test, high and low temperature cycle test, vibration test, drop test, stacking test, packaging and transportation test, odor detection, heavy metal foreign matter detection, etc., to ensure that the wine box packaging fully meets customer requirements.
