Flexible packaging is the most important category in the packaging industry. The output value of flexible packaging products exceeds half of the packaging industry.

A variety of paper, plastic, paper, plastic, plastic aluminum flexible packaging is widely used for packaging snack foods, dry goods, baked goods, candy, chocolate, frozen fresh food slices, frozen foods, coffee, tea, powdered food, bags Drugs, hardware parts and other goods.

In order to ensure the safety of foods and medicines, real-time information such as production dates and product lot numbers is printed on the flexible packaging of foods and medicines, and has become an important part of the production process of foods and pharmaceuticals. Real-time information enables manufacturers to track products when needed and provide protection when recalling products on a large scale. It can be said that coding technology has become an important part of modern quality systems.

Flexible Packaging Technology Introduction

The traditional flexible packaging coding technology relies on letterpress printing to create images using characters on the letter holder. The image is mechanically embossed or rolled onto the film surface.

Common letterpress printing techniques include hot stamping, wet ink, and one-touch ink marking machines.

In recent years, the continuous inkjet printing system (CIJ) has also been applied to flexible packaging. Inkjet printers print ink through the print head to print a variety of data on primary packaging and paper boxes, including simple date codes, logos, bar codes, and serial numbers.

The traditional letterpress printing technology and continuous inkjet printing system have their own advantages, but there are also many shortcomings, such as the traditional hot-carbon ribbon coder and ink wheel coder can not print in real time, need to manually update the date and batch number, The traceability is limited; on the print, there is no standard LOGO, bar code, or rotary image printing method, and each printed character needs character fonts. In production, hot carbon ribbon coder needs “preheating time” before operation, and “cooling time” when it is necessary to change information, which will prolong the production time, and once the character size is not accurately aligned, it will cause packaging film. Worn out. In addition, font wear or loss can make the print result unreadable, while the length of the hot carbon ribbon is also relatively short, the average length of domestic ribbon is only 100 meters; the ink of the ink printer needs time to dry out or may be dirty Traces and stains require special cleaning fluids to be cleaned, and most ink cartridges need to be warmed up (up to 30 minutes after heating the ink wheel) and need to be cooled before changing the code content.

Continuous inkjet printers have the advantages of wide application range and simple operation. However, fonts, character options, logos or barcodes are limited, the print quality is general, the printing direction must be consistent with the moving direction of the substrates, and the print heads need to be cleaned regularly and replaced regularly. Filters, cleaning of floors stained with ink, machines, conveyor belts, etc., and the special inks and solvents used for them often contain harmful substances and may require venting and other devices.

The latest laser and digital thermal transfer coders can greatly improve the problems of traditional coders, especially digital thermal transfer coders, which can improve the traceability of products while improving the code quality. , To improve the reliability and flexibility of equipment, suitable for a variety of flexible packaging materials.

Digital thermal transfer coding technology advantages

Technological innovation usually means that new technologies can bring higher product quality, faster production speeds, lower production costs, more reliable operating performance and higher product added value.

Digital thermal transfer coder is mainly composed of print head, print ribbon and controller. Printheads typically contain 8 to 12 dots per millimeter or 200 to 300 dots per inch (DPI). These dots can be quickly and continuously switched to transfer ink from ribbon to film to print images. Thanks to digital means, the coder can print "in real time" and change batch number and date information very quickly for batch and continuous packaging.

Thermal transfer printers use two types of print heads: flat and bevel. Among them, the flat head type print head belongs to an earlier technology. Although the cost is low, the resolution and the printing speed of the print image are not ideal; the bevel type print head technology is new, and can provide a faster print speed and a higher resolution. Some recently introduced thermal transfer printers mostly use beveled printheads, such as Marken's SmartDate and 18 series thermal printers.