Specialty printing utilizes unique methods such as woodblock printing (unique to my country), flexible tube printing, inkjet printing, holographic printing, and electrostatic printing. Printing with special-performance inks includes foaming printing, fragrance printing, magnetic printing, and liquid crystal printing. Printing on specially shaped surfaces such as cylinders, cones, spheres, and irregular curved surfaces is possible. Printing on special substrates is common today, including glass, plastics, metals, ceramics, silk, rubber, and wood. Transfer paper is also widely used, with ceramic transfer paper dating back to ancient times. Currently, various decal printing techniques are being developed, allowing transfers onto metals, wood, plastics, and building materials. Specialty printing has a bright future; wallpaper and decorative panels are all printed products. With the development of science and technology, even more specialty printing methods will emerge.
Offset Printing
Offset printing utilizes a fully automated production line, with computer-controlled automatic operation. It employs a printing tower with rotating cylinders (a type of offset printing, collectively known as planographic printing), and a conveyor belt automatically transports CDs. To prevent the mixing of different types of CDs, a BASLER R2 automatic detection system is added at the input. Offset printing primarily uses a white background and different proportions of the four primary colors (black, blue, magenta, and yellow) to create a variety of printing colors. The depth of each color is determined by the exposure time, printing pressure, and printing temperature. Longer exposure time results in a darker color; higher printing pressure results in a darker color; and higher printing temperature also results in a darker color.
1. Compared to screen printing, offset printing offers high efficiency, high quality, and low cost.
2.. High Efficiency: Offset printing uses a fully automated production line, with automatic color mixing and computer monitoring, resulting in high speed, capable of printing 15,000 sheets per hour.
3.. High Quality: Computer-controlled fine-tuning ensures precise color mixing and high positional accuracy.
4.. Excellent color effect. UV printing varnish provides glossy colors, a smooth surface, clear printing results, and resistance to fading.
5. Low cost. Offset printing uses roller printing, resulting in a thin printing layer and less ink usage.
Lens Retina Printing: Lens printing combines digital technology with traditional printing techniques to create various special effects on specially made films. It displays a lifelike three-dimensional world on a flat surface, smooth animation sequences like in a movie, and incredible transformative effects.
These are products made using lenticular printing technology. It is widely used in packaging, commercial advertising, educational cartoons, postcards, greeting cards, anti-counterfeiting marks, trademark tags, mouse holders, and various credit cards. It is also used for the decoration and embellishment of various products. The printed patterns are continuous and seamless, with excellent realism. Multi-angle three-dimensional printing can be performed simultaneously on irregular surfaces of pre-formed objects.
Lenticular printing is a printing technique that uses a lenticular lens to create a three-dimensional effect.
A lenticular lens is a thin sheet composed of strip-shaped lenses. When viewed from one side of a lens, an image is seen on a very fine line on the other side of the sheet, the position of which is determined by the viewing angle. If several images on different lines, corresponding to the width of each lens, are printed sequentially in rows on the back of the lenticular sheet, different images will be seen when viewed through the lenses from different angles. Therefore, products printed using lenticular lenses produce lifelike three-dimensional images and various image-changing effects.
This type of printing allows for the direct observation of a three-dimensional image on a two-dimensional plane without any tools. Looking at these products, people must be curious about how they are made. The natural sense of depth we perceive when observing objects is due to the distance between our eyes. When observing an object, the left and right eyes observe from different angles, creating visual differences between the two eyes. These differences, when processed by the brain, produce the perception of distance and depth.
Pre-press production utilizes the principle of lenticular printing, employing cylindrical lenticular lenses to achieve stereoscopic imaging. This utilizes the depth perception created by the parallax and convergence of the human eyes to achieve a stereoscopic effect in the viewer's mind. Therefore, theoretically, a stereoscopic image can only be synthesized from a set of images of a scene taken from two or more different observation points.
A cylindrical lenticular lens consists of many small cylindrical lenses with identical structural parameters and performance. This characteristic gives it the ability to "compress" and "isolate" images. A cylindrical lenticular lens can record many images taken from different angles as stripes on the same image. When viewed, the same cylindrical lenticular lens allows the viewer's eyes to see two different images of the same scene, thus creating a depth image with a parallax stereoscopic effect in the viewer's mind. Since a cylindrical lenticular lens is composed of cylindrical lenses arranged in a planar linear pattern, a stereoscopic image created by a cylindrical lenticular lens should be called a one-way automatic stereoscopic image, meaning that only horizontal parallax information can be perceived.
Thermal Transfer Printing Thermal transfer printing is a relatively new printing process, introduced from abroad only about 10 years ago. This printing process is divided into two main parts: transfer film printing and transfer processing. Transfer film printing uses halftone printing (resolution up to 300dpi), pre-printing the pattern onto the film surface. The printed patterns are rich in detail, vibrant in color, highly varied, with minimal color difference and excellent reproducibility, meeting the designer's requirements and suitable for mass production. Transfer processing uses a heat transfer machine to transfer the intricate pattern from the transfer film onto the product surface in a single process (heat and pressure). After molding, the ink layer fuses seamlessly with the product surface, resulting in a realistic and beautiful finish, significantly enhancing the product's quality. However, due to the high technical content of this process, many materials need to be imported.
Heat transfer printing is applicable to the surfaces of various products such as ABS, PP, plastics, wood, and coated metals. Heat transfer films can be designed and produced according to customer requirements, transferring patterns to the workpiece surface through heat pressing, thus improving product quality. Heat transfer printing is widely used in the plastics, cosmetics, toys, electrical appliances, building materials, gifts, food packaging, and stationery industries.
Screen Printing Screen printing uses a screen with open mesh to transfer ink onto a substrate. Compared to relief, planographic, and gravure printing, it offers a wider range of printing options and more advantages. The types of inks and substrates that can be used are also increasing.
Screen printing is not limited by the size or shape of the substrate; it can print on various shaped objects and on uneven surfaces. --The screen is flexible and requires relatively low printing pressure.
Screen printing produces thick ink layers with strong adhesion. Print thickness can reach 30-100μm, and the ink has exceptionally strong opacity, resulting in a strong three-dimensional effect in the printed images, unmatched by other printing methods (ink layer thickness can also be controlled). --Suitable for various types of inks: It is highly adaptable and can print on any type of coating, such as oil-based, water-based, synthetic resin-based, and powder inks. Any ink or coating with a mesh fineness that can pass through the screen can be used. It can print in monochrome, as well as in multi-color printing and halftone printing.
