Flexography printing is mostly used for printing on packages such as plastic shopping bags, milk cartons, food and candy wrappers and disposable cups and it is the cheapest and most simple form of printing process for packaging. Flexography makes use of flexible printing plates made of rubber or plastic. Flexo uses a relief plate in order to print, where the letters and print makes use of a protruding, jutting out surface. This is where ink will be applied, while the recessed surface is the non-coloured part of the image. Only the raised (relief) images come in contact with the substrate during printing. If a printing package requires 5 colours, then 5 different printing plates would be needed; 1 for each colour. The fountain roll picks up the ink from the ink tray, sends it to the anilox roll which provides a controlled amount of ink to the printing plate by use of tiny engraved cells, which are being held by the plate cylinder and finally, an impression cylinder transfers the image onto the substrate by applying pressure to the plate cylinder.
This printing method is not suitable for images which require high quality printing or cases where the use of small text font with a certain typography is used, since quality can easily be lost in the process. On the plus side, the type of ink used in this printing method has a low viscosity which is beneficial for the ink to dry faster than offset printing and so results in faster production.
Coating, cutting, folding and binding of the image produced, are all part of the process after the print is finished.
References
YouTube. (14 March, 2013). Inside Jobs – Flexography. [online] Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGzU8k5mmdA [Accessed 17 Oct. 2016].
Pneac.org. (2016). Printing Process Descriptions: Environment and Printing: The Printers’ national Environmental Assistance Center: PNEAC: The Environmental InformationWebsite for the Printing Industry. [online] Available at: http://www.pneac.org/printprocesses/flexography/ [Accessed 17 Oct. 2016].
En.wikipedia.org. (2016). Flexography. [online] Available at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flexography [Accessed 17 Oct. 2016].
Melvin Magro 