Gravure Printing Terms You Didn't Know

In the gravure printing process, technicians often use a great deal of professional terminology. What exactly do these terms mean?

1. Printing—the process technology of using a printing plate or other means to adsorb and transfer the image and text information on the original onto a substrate.
2. Substrate—any substance that can accept ink or adsorb colorant and present images and text.
3. Printing plate—the carrier of printing images and text used to transfer ink to the substrate. It is usually divided into four types: relief (letterpress), gravure (intaglio), planographic (offset) and porous (screen) plates.
4. Doctor blade—the steel blade on a gravure press used to scrape excess ink off the surface of the cylinder.
5. Doctor blade angle—the angle between the doctor blade's scraping face and the tangent of the cylinder at the scraping point (measured in the cross-section through the scraping point perpendicular to the axis centre line).
6. Doctor blade streak—a black line appearing in the direction of cylinder rotation caused by the doctor blade, one of the faults in gravure printing.
7. Dot—the pixel that makes up a halftone image, reproducing the light and dark effect of the original through changes in area or ink volume.
8. Register—in printing with two or more colours, the ability of each separated colour plate's image and text to reach and maintain accurate positional alignment.
9. Register marks—the cross lines and corner lines set at the edge of the printing plate, used as the basis for mounting the plate and checking registration.
10. Direct printing—a printing method in which the images and text on the printing plate are transferred directly to the surface of the substrate.
11. Indirect printing—a printing method in which the ink on the patterns and characters of the printing plate is transferred to the surface of the substrate via an intermediate carrier.
12. Printing pressure—the interacting force between the bodies being pressed during the printing process.
13. Misregistration—the error in overlapping imprints during colour printing.
14. Drying in the cells (dry plate)—ink in the cells that, after passing the doctor blade and before being transferred to the substrate, partly or fully dries, so the pattern on the printed product cannot be printed completely.
15. Plugged plate—the cells of the plate cylinder become completely or partially blocked for some reason, so that they cannot fully absorb ink, making the imprint colour lighter or even impossible to print.
16. Plate run length—within the specified quality range, the highest number of impressions a single printing plate can produce.

——This article is reprinted from China Packaging Network (pack.cn). Original link: http://news.pack.cn/show-378476.html