As a synonym for green and environmentally friendly printing, flexographic printing has always been of great concern. Looking back at the development of flexographic printing, the emergence of laser plate making technology has made a qualitative leap in the quality of flexographic printing, and also made it possible for flexographic printing products to follow offset or gravure printing. However, due to the characteristics of flexographic printing itself, there are still some bottleneck problems that cannot be solved in practical application, For example, the phenomenon of merging gradient levels, the problem of gradual screen loss, the problem of printing resistance of high gloss dots, the phenomenon of needle hole leakage in the field, and the presence of both large and large areas of dots on the same color plate, etc. Most of these problems are directly related to the flexible printing plate. It can be said that if these problems are not effectively solved, The quality of flexographic printing products may always be one level worse than that of gravure printing.
Today, we have finally ushered in another technological leap in flexographic plate making technology, which is the emergence of "high-definition flat top laser plate making technology". If the CDI laser plate making technology around 2000 was the first generation of laser plate making technology, then the high-definition flat top laser plate making technology in 2013 can be considered the second generation of laser plate making technology. The invention and application of high-definition flat top laser plate making technology have largely solved the bottleneck phenomena mentioned earlier, making it possible for our flexographic printing products to approach or even surpass offset or gravure printing products to a certain extent.
I have been paying attention to the development of laser plate making technology both domestically and internationally for many years. Since I first came into contact with this flat top dot technology in 2011, I have spent almost a year and a half continuously learning and understanding the theoretical basis of high-definition flat top plate making technology. At the same time, I have continuously tested the actual performance of this laser flat top flexographic plate through machine printing, and personally experienced the excellent performance of numerous laser flat top dot points. During the nearly one and a half years of market research and investigation, the outstanding representative of this technology that I have gained the most knowledge and exposure to is Kodak's laser flat top dot plate making system - FlexcelNX. As the first person to propose the orthodox flat top dot theory and promote the application of technology, Kodak's Flexcel-NX won the American Flexographic Printing Innovation Award with its launch. It is for these reasons that Shanghai Minjia Plate Making Company, where the author works, took the lead in introducing the first high-definition flat top laser plate making system (Flexcel NX) in East China at the end of 2013, hoping to take this opportunity to contribute to the promotion of flexible laser plate making technology.
Although the laser flat top plate making technology has been widely used abroad and is relatively mature and stable, it has only just begun to be applied on a small scale in China. For many people engaged in flexographic printing, this technology is still relatively unfamiliar (of course, this is also a process that a new technological theory inevitably goes through, namely invention, understanding, popularization and application, etc.). Next, I would like to compare the details of various stages of plate making and printing between Kodak's Flexcel-NX plate making system and traditional laser plate making equipment commonly used in the market, in order to provide a deeper understanding of the excellent performance of laser flat top plate making technology.