The development status and development trend of printing technology in China

With the continuous development of social economy, vigorously developing economy-saving industries and realizing the transformation of economic structure have become the new tasks of current economic development, and the five development concepts of innovation, coordination, green, openness and sharing established by the Fifth Plenary Session of the 18th Central Committee of the Party provide development ideas for the development of the packaging industry. At the same time, the implementation of printing based on the "Internet +" action has transformed from the past rough development model into a personalized and high-quality direction. However, compared with developed countries, the total output value of China's printing industry is still very low. Based on the new requirements of the society for the printing industry, it is required that printing technology should continue to carry out technological innovation in order to meet the needs of social development.

1 Overview of printing

Printing (Graphic Arts, Graphic Communications) is a technology that transfers ink to paper, textiles, leather, and other materials through the process of plate making, ink application, and pressure to reproduce the contents of the original text. In a simple sense, printing is the process of using a plate or other means to transfer the graphic information on the original manuscript to the substrate, and it can also be understood as the replication process of using an analog or digital image carrier to transfer the color agent/color material (such as ink) to the substrate.

Printing technology in China has a long history, it represents the excellent culture of the Chinese nation, is the crystallization of human wisdom, the earliest existing documents and the earliest Chinese block printing material is in 600 AD, that is, the early Tang Dynasty. With the development of economy, the application of printing technology in production practice is more extensive, it can be said that all walks of life are inseparable from printing, overall printing technology mainly includes: lithography printing, letterpress printing (including flexographic process), gravure printing, screen printing and digital printing coexist. Generally speaking, offset printing process in China's printing history for a long time, and because of its low production cost, and widely used in practice, but it has the disadvantage of high energy consumption, is not conducive to China's current efforts to develop energy-saving resources of the economic development requirements. Flexible printing has the advantages of many printing processes, flexible printing has the characteristics of small printing pressure and clear impression at the time of printing, especially the universality of printing objects, which can not only adapt to high-quality cardboard, but also adapt to poor quality cardboard, but its plate material is more expensive, so the manufacturing cost is relatively high, especially not suitable for small batch production; Gravure printing process has a strong sense of printing layer, so the printing ink is easy to dry in the printing process, so gravure printing process is suitable for home decoration products, such as suitable for field printing and so on, based on the printing technology is not easy to produce printing color difference, so it is suitable for large-scale printing products; Screen printing process as the name suggests its plate is a screen structure, through the role of the scraper to make the liquid ink through the mesh of the network layout version, permeate and pad printing on the product, thus forming the printed text and text, its biggest feature is the thick printing ink layer, suitable for printing a large area of the field or line layout products, but, The accuracy of its product reproduction is not as good as that of offset, gravure or flexo printing processes. Gravure printing is a printing process with the highest printing resistance of the plate, and its printing speed is also fast, and the precision of product reproduction is relatively high. Digital printing is the product of the development of computer technology, is the main development trend of current printing technology, digital printing can meet the needs of personalized printing business, mainly through the computer printing products directly printed to a variety of materials, the application of digital printing technology for traditional printing technology is a breakthrough, changed the backward process of traditional printing. It has met the requirements for the implementation of the "Internet +" action. In particular, the development of cloud technology has driven the development of "cloud" printing technology, and it can be said that a large number of personalized printing needs have promoted the application of cloud printing technology. Compared with traditional printing methods, cloud printing can achieve personalized customization, order at any time, fast delivery, due to the use of network technology to optimize the production process, reduce production costs, can effectively save paper costs for customers.

2. Development status of printing technology

After years of development, China's printing technology has been innovative development, from 2006 to 2011 the world's top 12 printing market chart, China has replaced Germany and the United Kingdom to become the third largest printing market. However, with the development of technological innovation and change, there is still a big gap in the development of printing technology in China compared with advanced foreign countries:

2.1 Achievements of printing technology in China

The printing industry in our country has a long historical development, so our printing technology is relatively mature, our printing technology has made good achievements: first of all, our digital printing technology is more and more perfect. Digital printing is actually through the computer through the printing device, directly online printing an emerging printing process, with the continuous development and progress of digital technology, digital printing has been a simple color printer, to the direction of digital special printing press, printing materials are also from the special printing paper to the direction of packaging printing materials change. The printing format has developed from the traditional small size to the large format direction, so as to better avoid the error between the proofing and printing different processes, so that the level of packaging printing technology has also been better improved. For example, 3D printing technology is now widely used (see Figure 1); Secondly, the performance of printing equipment is becoming more and more perfect. Taking semi-automated and automated equipment as an example, we developed a digital indentation machine in 2009, and in the next two years, its total sales in the domestic market is not more than 10, and in 2011 sales have more than 50, and then sales are doubling every year. Finally printing technology integration technology application. D ICO w eb on-board plate-making commercial rotary machine features: repeated printing without a plate image imaging: modular design, can be diversified combination: simple replacement of drum sleeve and drum. You can print a range of different sizes and products. Advantages: The concept of operation is simple and requires few hands. Integrated digital prepress process.

2.2 The defects of printing technology in China

(1) China's printing technology has not achieved green. Taking gravure printing as an example, gravure printing occupies a dominant position in packaging printing. Due to its wide range of substrates, high quality and high technical content, it is widely used in packaging printing of food, medicine, tobacco, wine and other industries, and combined with a number of special processes, it is widely used in the printing of securities such as anti-counterfeiting trademarks, banknotes, stamps, etc. Products and people's lives are inseparable, gravure shows a strong vitality. However, the emissions of VOCs in gravure printing seriously pollute the environment, and it is necessary to put forward technical problems and actively propose solutions from the aspects of the water-based printing ink and adhesive at the source, the production and manufacturing of plate materials, the process control in printing production, the transformation of gravure equipment, and the integration of recycling devices in the end treatment.

(2) The product performance structure is unreasonable. Throughout the overall status of China's printing equipment, there is a lack of high-end equipment, low-end equipment surplus problem, this situation can only cause the printing industry results unreasonable phenomenon, seriously affect the healthy development of the printing industry. (3) The application level of hybrid printing technology is not high. Hybrid printing technology is one of the trends of the future development of printing technology, foreign advanced countries of hybrid printing technology has been very mature, but China's hybrid printing technology is not mature, especially the lack of a complete printing digital production chain. In addition, China's relevant talents are also insufficient, and the lack of talents will directly lead to the development of printing enterprises. However, the talents cultivated by the current vocational colleges can not meet such needs. Therefore, it is necessary for the state, higher vocational colleges and enterprises to jointly establish a sharing mechanism to meet the requirements of talents in this area.

3 The development trend of printing technology in China

Based on the rapid development of China's Internet technology and the requirements of the "13th Five-Year" development plan of the printing and packaging industry, combined with the current development status of printing technology at home and abroad, the development trend of China's printing technology mainly shows the following trends:

3.1 Highly automated

Automation is a concrete embodiment of the integration of the "Internet +" strategy, with the development of computer technology, many new printing equipment has been equipped with automatic processing technology, such as computer automatic technology control, shaftless technology and optical fiber transmission technology. Traditional printing workshop due to the principle of printing paper material problems in the printing process due to environmental humidity factors, resulting in printing work is affected, so the application of dehumidifier printing plant has high application value, to achieve automatic control of the plant temperature, when the humidity and temperature in the plant exceed the predetermined temperature, The device will automatically stop, and when the actual humidity is lower than the predetermined device, the device will automatically turn on, realizing the automatic control of the printing process. The application of this equipment greatly improves the economic and social benefits of printing enterprises.

3.2 Linkage

The high-end technology of printing technology has driven the linkage of printing equipment workflow, which is mainly carried out in a modular and streamlined operation mode. In particular, the development of digital technology has led to the linkage of printing technology, which realizes the integration of pre-press, printing and post-press. For example, in order to solve the connection needs of digital printing in the later stage, all the post-press modules of MBO digital can be smoothly and directly integrated into the same production process. It can be directly connected to digital printing equipment for production or connected to an uncoiling unit for offline production, and the products are more in line with the actual needs of customers, and can provide customers with innovative and efficient perfect solutions.

3.3 Intelligence

Intelligence is one of the main trends in the development of printing technology, but also the main symbol of the development of modern digital technology, intelligence is based on the development of Internet technology, which breaks the traditional manual operation of the main model, to achieve the need for printing without plate making work. However, we should also see the disadvantages of the development of intelligent printing technology in China, that is, food intelligent packaging needs to be developed, and the result will directly affect the safety of food.

3.4 Green Environmental Protection

We will pursue green development. Green environmental protection is one of the priorities of the printing industry during the "13th Five-Year Plan" period. We must strive to achieve the green certification standards of the production process advocated by the state, and work hard to promote energy saving and consumption reduction in the printing industry and develop a green environmental protection economy. Promote the development of low-carbon recycling, comprehensively save and rationally use resources, and vigorously develop the recycling and comprehensive utilization of waste gas, wastewater and printed solid waste. The green development trend of printing technology should mainly do the following two aspects: First, the concept of environmental protection in the printing design, many printing companies in the design to strengthen the external things, but ignore the concept of environmental protection, resulting in excessive pollution, so the current printing design reflects the concept of environmental protection, in the design of creative time to meet customer needs, reduce environmental pollution characteristics; The second is reflected in the printing process, we know that the traditional factor process is easy to produce various forms of waste liquid, these waste liquid pollution to the environment is huge, so based on the requirements of environmental protection tasks, green technology is mainly manifested in the one hand is to increase the recycling of waste liquid, on the other hand is to improve and strengthen technological innovation, actively adopt advanced auxiliary materials, produce more advanced ink, Realize the environmental protection of ink structure.

peroration

With the implementation of China's "Internet +" action, printing technology through the combination of Internet technology, promote the rapid development of printing technology, so in China's economic structure transformation, building energy-saving industry under the background, how to achieve the combination of printing technology and modern technology, with the existing traditional printing basic conditions, to achieve a more reasonable digital printing system construction, Creating greater benefits for enterprises is a topic that we must pay attention to and must solve. This requires every practitioner to contribute their energy, committed to more efficient, higher quality printing technology research and development, really let China become a printing power.