How Traditional Screen Printing Combines Digital Printing

Many years ago, precisely in 1994-1995, many people believed that the emergence of digital printing was a threat, especially for screen printing. It was a terrible threat. In 5 years, digital printing will swallow screen printing. Even Americans and Europeans believe it. Fortunately, in the face of this situation, there are also other down-to-earth, forward-thinking people, such as FESPA and SGIA, the highest screen printing professional organizations, who have identified and proposed The best solution is to organize and integrate large-scale digital printing within their associations, and then combine digital printing in their own printing plants, so that digital printing will not be fierce in front of screen printing. competition. I remember at a number of international technical seminars and exchanges, including the Lyon FESPA exhibition in 1969. There were some digital printing practitioners who did statistics. They claimed that the results of the statistics showed that digital printing was printed in other ways. There will be breakthrough expansion in front of the process (mainly screen printing), but they have forgotten the following three points:

1. Due to mechanical and physical limitations such as the conversion speed of the print head or the ejection speed of ink droplets, digital printing technology will eventually reach its limit at some time or soon;

2. They often claim that digital printing can achieve high printing speeds, but forget that their actual print resolution is only 50 dpi or 72 dpi. Assuming that the quality required for printing POPs is 300 dpi or 600 dpi, the printing speed will be slowed by 6 to 12 times, and the speed of 600 m2/h will be 100 m2/h or even 50 m2/h. In screen printing, our customers require a quality of 300 L/inch (120 L/cm), often 610 dpi. We need photo-like quality. In contrast, digital printing is too slow.

3. Many printing materials used in the digital printing process must be pre-processed, and after the printing is completed, special finishing processes must be carried out in order to provide mechanical and physical protection for the printed materials. These finishing processes are used in these processes. The inks or colorants are very expensive, and the finishing process will increase the cost of the printed product. In addition, they also ignored the screen printing process can respond in such ways as quickly.

1). Screen printing, like offset printing and other printing processes, makes full use of the advantages of digitization, and its prepress process quickly realizes full digitization.

2). Screen Printing Technology has developed large format multi-color printing presses and computer direct screen printing systems for graphic printing, and has comprehensively improved and improved screen printing technologies, products, equipment and productivity. As a result, in 1996, 100 copies of digital jobs were cheaper to use for digital printing, and by 1990, the more economical number of digital printing had been reduced to 50, and screen printing was quickly recaptured. A large part of the lost market. The actual situation is not as optimistic as they predicted. Screen printing has reached relative stability in Europe and elsewhere in the world. For many screen printers, digital printing has become their necessary and complementary business. Digital printing has been accepted by the screen printing industry. Its existence is no longer seen as a threat, but as a meaningful opportunity. This is why our screen printing companies must enter the field of digital printing. Let us now discuss the digital printing market. For the digital printing market, my point is that some medium-sized screen printing companies or sign manufacturers, which have about 20 to 40 employees, are equipped with semi-automatic and fully-automatic screen printing production lines, suitable for their choice of digital The printing technology should be a piezoelectric ink jet printer, not a thermal ink jet printer. Thermal ink jets are too limited and can only be printed on some traditional substrates. However, 50% of piezoelectric inkjet printers use solvent ink, which has environmental pollution problems.

I once suggested to a friend in Italy that it is best to purchase a platform piezo inkjet printer using advanced UV technology. This system can print on various substrates, and the prepress and postprint substrates do not need to be specially processed. This is a major advancement in digital printing technology, and it is well adapted to the needs of screen printers so that they can provide customers with more services without any environmental pollution problems. For a small-scale screen printing factory that invests 150,000 U.S. dollars, the production operation is free from any contamination, no additional drying device is required, and only the UV curing system is required after the printing head. You must know that operating in a super large format (4 to 7 m wide) market means that your investment will be at least $700,000. This is a very conservative figure for large companies with investment potential. . In this situation, you need to do a lot of commercial operations. Need to print 30m2 or more of print, for most customers only once a year, only for your one-year production business, your sales staff will provide you with 200 to 300 new customers. On the contrary, if your digital technology investment is reduced to a minimum, below $20,000, in this case, you can only print jobs below 135cm in width, the printing speed is not fast, the quality level is in the middle, the lower, etc. However, This helps you to serve your existing or new customers. Such digital printers can only use solvent inks (unfortunately with more than 50 % volatiles), and traditional digital infrared printers (IR) or jet dryers are used behind the digital printers. Of course, there is a problem of environmental pollution.

Reprinted from: China Inkjet Forum