The printing process of customized packaging boxes involves many types of process issues, material issues, and so on, and every detail will affect the final display of the finished product. And designers often don't understand so many details. I started a packaging box printing factory and, with years of experience, I understand the so-called problems throughout the entire process. But it is difficult to communicate with designers and inform them in advance on how to avoid various unexpected situations. To solve this problem, engineers from ITIS packaging factory will be involved in production for a long time. They understand various techniques, materials, and their applications in different situations better than production masters. At the same time, our engineers have compiled a complete set of teaching materials on how designers should communicate with production factories after multiple discussions. This set of textbooks on customized packaging box printing is also a compulsory course for our salespersons, who need to pass an exam before they can take up their positions. Therefore, our salespeople can effectively communicate with customers about customized packaging box printing and provide reasonable suggestions.
The collaboration between designers and factories faces many challenges, especially in the process of design implementation. During the creative process, although designers can carefully polish their designs and products, if the craftsmanship is too complex, some techniques may be difficult to achieve. At this time, factories often need to discuss with designers whether they can lower their requirements
Precautions for hot stamping process
1. The hot stamping content should not be too complicated, as complex patterns are prone to problems during the hot stamping process.
2. Avoid using large areas of color blocks, such as 3x3cm square full plate hot stamping, as this design is difficult to color.
3. Do not directly apply the edge of the hot color content to avoid incomplete ironing. It is recommended to be at least 2mm away from the edge.
4. The content of the hot stamping layer should preferably be a solid color, especially black, and avoid using strange colors to avoid affecting the hot stamping effect.
The colors that can be hot pressed include gold, silver, shot gold, laser silver, black, red, green, and many other colors.
Hot stamping technology is a special printing technique that uses the principle of hot press transfer to transfer aluminum or other colored materials from electroplated aluminum to the surface of the substrate, forming a special metallic color effect. There are various types of hot stamping paper materials, including but not limited to gold, silver, laser gold, laser silver, etc. These materials can be hot stamped onto various substrates such as paper, leather, textiles, plastics, etc. under certain temperature and pressure. The hot stamping process is not limited to traditional gold. With the development of technology and changes in market demand, the materials used in the hot stamping process are becoming increasingly diverse, which can meet the personalized needs of different industries and products.
We often encounter the problem of printing colors not catching up with the original color. Once encountering such problems, production personnel often need to adjust the color multiple times on the machine, which causes significant waste of time for printing enterprises. The main problem that most printed materials cannot keep up with the color of the customer's original manuscript is that the dot size changes during the printing process.
At this point, the designer needs to check if the current printed effect is acceptable. If it is not acceptable, they should provide timely feedback and negotiate with the factory about why this is happening, some solutions, and then some negotiations to achieve the final printed color as close as possible!
Low ink compatibility: Ink and material need to have a certain degree of compatibility. If the ink used does not match the material well, or if the ink used is not suitable for a specific material, it can also cause the color of the printed product to be inconsistent with the original color, increasing the difficulty of color tracing.
Low surface tension of materials: The high or low surface tension of materials directly affects the adhesion of ink. If the surface tension of the material is lower than 38 dynes, it is difficult for the ink to firmly adhere to the surface of the material, resulting in poor ink adhesion after printing, which is also a factor that leads to difficulty in printing color tracing.Minor flaws in the printing layout
Minor flaws in the printing and packaging process are a normal phenomenon, usually not considered as quality defects. These flaws include color deviation, cutting errors, minor paper wear or creases, ink odor, and small changes in the image. Although these defects may occur during the production process, they do not necessarily belong to quality issues!
When there is a defect in the product, it is necessary to communicate with the company leadership in a timely manner to see if it is acceptable. If the product defect may affect sales, the order can be raised with the printing factory, such as refunding part of the amount as compensation or providing services such as reprinting.
During the printing process, various minor issues may arise due to various transportation factors such as paper, availability, and mechanical operation. Although these issues may affect the appearance of printed materials, they are usually not considered serious quality problems.
Defects such as missing prints, missing characters, and varying sizes may occur. The traditional solution relies on manual inspection, but this method has the problems of high labor intensity and high probability of missed detections.
Different materials or printing may have different requirements for documents from the printing factory. In this case, the printing factory often communicates with them about the required format and cooperates with them. This is also a problem that packaging designers will encounter in the future and belongs to the normal scope of communication. Our designers can cooperate with the factory!
JPG is a bitmap format and cannot be used in printing production. Why does label printing require vector design drawings? Why can't JPG images be used for printing? This is because JPG images that appear to be composed of continuous lines are actually made up of pixel by pixel, which can cause distortion and jagged edges when zoomed in.
The commonly used file formats for printing mainly include PDF, JPEG, PNG, DIMTIF, EPS, PSD, etc. These formats have their own characteristics and are suitable for different printing needs.
PDF: A file is a universal submission format. Used to ensure consistency in viewing documents across different annotations. It supports embedding and adjustment of fonts, colors, images, and layouts, making it one of the most commonly used printing file formats PDF can save files in their original format, ensuring consistency and accuracy when opened and browsed on different devices, while ensuring file security.
In the printing process, sometimes there are errors in plate making, such as text errors, color errors, process errors, etc., which result in significant discrepancies between the finished product and the design. After the designer discovers this issue and believes it will affect them, they can contact the relevant printing manufacturer to make corresponding modifications, and the other party should also be responsible for their momentary carelessness.
The influence of temperature and humidity: The size of the film will change with the variation of temperature and humidity. An increase in temperature will cause the size of the film to increase, while a decrease in temperature will cause the size to decrease. Similarly, changes in humidity can also cause variations in film size. This phenomenon of thermal expansion and contraction is due to the effect of the thermal expansion deformation coefficient and wet expansion deformation coefficient of the film.
The impact of storage environment: The storage environment of film has a significant impact on its dimensional stability. If the non forest does not adapt to the temperature and humidity of the working environment before use, or does not reach a balanced state after changing the environment, it may lead to size changes. In addition, the placement of the film, whether it is curled or pulled, and other operations can also affect its dimensional stability.
Improper operation during use: Improper operation during the use of film, such as the document not being flattened, the document not being placed in the center position, or problems with the output machine, can all lead to incorrect film size. This needs to be avoided by checking and calibrating the output devices, ensuring document flatness, and correctly performing the development and light painting processes.
The position of the die-cutting indentation line does not match the position of the printed product, the die-cutting accuracy is not high, and the size of the shake cover is different. These errors may be caused by various factors, including errors in the production process of the die-cutting blade, inconsistent rules of the cardboard gripper, wear and elongation of the main transmission chain, wear of the intermittent mechanism, insufficient positioning distance of the front/rear positioning swing frame, inaccurate positioning of the upper/lower die-cutting plate, wear of the side positioning plate, and too little or uneven pressure on the gripper teeth.
During the cutting process, there may be slight dimensional deviations, which are usually within the allowable range of product specifications. If the finished product has significant errors that seriously affect the final effect of the printed product, timely feedback should be given to relevant personnel in the company! Hold the printing factory accountable!
Errors during die-cutting may also be caused by insufficient precision in mold production, dimensional errors caused by mold installation, and speed differences generated by die-cutting sticks. To solve these problems, it is necessary to ensure the selection and quality of die-cutting pads, regularly grind or replace damaged die-cutting pads, and consider both lifespan and quality when purchasing die-cutting stock handles.
Errors in paper pattern direction can also lead to inaccurate positioning or specifications. The methods to solve these problems include using laser plate making to improve accuracy, adjusting the rear positioning of the die-cutting machine, replacing worn parts, adjusting the positioning rules of the paper conveying side or front positioning rules, etc
The above are the details and suggestions that ITIS Packaging Factory needs to communicate regarding the printing process of customized paper box packaging. I believe this textbook will definitely help more designers understand how to communicate with printing factories.
