Flexographic ink vs. Litho Printing Inks

Printing ink manufacturers produce both Flexography and lithography inks in majority because both printing methods are used for printing in high volumes and great reliability. Both of them are used for mass printing of packaging , maps, books and other printed paper material. While litho printing has been dominating the market flexography is steadily gaining popularity.

The process of printing in both methods is different. In lithography the press applies the ink onto the printing plates and then from the onto a rubber blanket which transfers it to the object that is to be printed. Most of the time the plate and blanket mechanism is mounted onto a cylinder. The work of flexographic printing happens a little differently. The plates mounted on the cylinder are flexible. An Printing ink roller partially immersed in ink applies it onto the anilox roll. The anilox roll is covered in thousands of little pockets and the Printing ink is distributed to uniform thickness. When the roll goes over the plates it spreads the ink over the plates and then the substrate is rolled between print roller and an impression cylinder. The substrate is then fed through a dryer to prevent smudging.

Offset lithography is fine along as the print surface is flat. However when it comes to a different range of substrates it falters. Lithography productions cost more and processes such as metallic inks, embossing, specialty coating, and foils require extra setup time and handling. While older flexo presses produced lower quality prints newer ones use specialized flexographic printing ink that reduces wastage and provides print quality that rivals lithography. Production costs are also much less in flexography. Also unlike lithographic presses flexographic presses can reuse their plates.

Flexographic printing offers better changeovers for print runs that are short and those that require slight variations to the print. The setup process for special effects is also very simple and cost efficient . The great thing about this is that it can handle really unusual substrates like coated paper and cardboards. This makes it the preferable choice for printing on packaging. A plus is that you can use it to print on thermal paper.

Thermal paper is better than regular printing paper and produces really sharper images. It is impregnated with a compound that change color on application of heat. To reduce fading of thermal images it is coated with oils, fats, lard, plasticizers and similar substances. This makes the surface too slick to be printed on by lithography. Thanks to flexographic printing working on a number of substrates it can even print on the surface of glossy thermal paper as well. Thanks to this we can enjoy really sharp prints on thermal paper which is cheaper that printing paper.