Journal of Printing Science and Technology
Online ISSN : 1882-4935
Print ISSN : 0914-3319
ISSN-L : 0914-3319
Volume 43, Issue 4
Displaying 1-9 of 9 articles from this issue
Special Review
  • Shimeo MORITA, Kunio KINEBUCHI
    2006 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 232-242
    Published: 2006
    Released on J-STAGE: August 15, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The history of flexography in Japan is superficial, significantly different from Europe, America and reaches today while a lot of evils of an element of the market show the sign of arising than an element of technology sometimes the past. However, there is the omen that demand gets up as at the present when attention degree to environmental correspondence is rising including maintenance of infrastructure and a future style of printing acceleratingly, and it is thought that the increase of the future market will have opportunities.
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  • Shinji TANAKA
    2006 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 243-246
    Published: 2006
    Released on J-STAGE: August 15, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Taking a general view of the latest technical trend of flexo printing plates, processing method is shifting from conventional solvent wash to water wash or heat wash method from environmental point of view, and such plate making systems as Laser Ablation Masking(LAM), Direct Laser Engraving(DLE), Ink Jet Masking are being popularly proposed as CTP. I explain such technology and summarize the technical trend in terms of printing plates.
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  • Masahide KOBAYASHI
    2006 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 247-254
    Published: 2006
    Released on J-STAGE: August 15, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    In the technology of flexo printing, some innovations in the field of a flexo printing machine, a flexo plate, or an anilox roll have been continued in several years. By these innovations, flexo printing has come to have a quality almost equivalent to gravure printing or offset printing, and flexo printing has brought a possibility of replacing gravure printing and offset printing. These innovations also required innovations from flexo inks. This paper describes the latest technology trends of flexo ink
    1.Rise of ink color density
    High brilliance and high definition flexo printing use an anilox roll with the greater number of lines.(High brilliance and high minute flexo printing use high line number anilox rolls.)The volume of a cell becomes smaller as the line number of an anilox roll becomes higher. In this case, a development is needed in flexo ink with the performance of high color density and low viscosity.
    2. Water based flexo ink
    Water based ink is used for the purpose of an environmental improvement. Ink physical properties and printing properties have been improved as a result of eager research, as the result printing properties are approaching the printing properties of solvent type ink, however there are also still many subjects. Recently, a company who had introduced a printing machine specially designed for water-based flexo to plastic films came out.
    3.UV cured flexo ink
    By development of a new photo polymerization initiator and various new technologies, the problem of the bad smell of printed matter has been solved gradually. Although a close-up of cationic curable flexo ink has been taken from a viewpoint of a bad smell again, since it has various restrictions, cationic ink has not resulted in spread yet. As an improvement measure of a bad smell, the motion that proposes EB curable flexo ink system has also come out.
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  • Yuichi SASAKI
    2006 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 255-258
    Published: 2006
    Released on J-STAGE: August 15, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Laser Engraved Ceramic(LEC)roll is becoming more and more popular than before. Here, I would like to introduce the latest technologies about LEC roll. YAG laser is used more than 500 lines per inch(LPI). The latest YAG laser can engrave about 2500 LPI. High quality Flexo printing like 150 LPI plate screen with 1% dot and 2% dot needs about 1500LPI screen anilox roller. It can be not engraved by CO2 laser. Multi-hits engraving has the better character of transferring ink compared with single-hit engraving because the cell of multi-hits engraving has the smoother surface. ART is the abbreviation of "Anilox Reverse Technologies". Compared with normal hexagon cell, the "cell" is connecting with next cell each other and as the result, the character of ink transfer is quite excellent. And it is easy to get more cell volume compared with cell type engraving. There is not only LEC roll also doctor blade for technology advance. BTG doctor blade is exclusive to LEC roll not for hard chrome engraved roll, which edge is coated by ceramic. Normally it can be used more than five times as normal steel doctor blade. Customers will be freer from exchanging doctor blade than before. Finally, the sleeve technology gives also very easy operation for users. Sleeve anilox roller is quite lighter than steel base anilox roller and connecting to reduce "down time".
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  • Makoto KITSUGI
    2006 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 259-265
    Published: 2006
    Released on J-STAGE: August 15, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Package design and printing quality greatly influence sales. Especially, package design and processed data with prepress system are highly valued properties. Therefore, it is very important to manage the careful package design and processed data to keep confidential. This paper focuses on data management system for package design and prepress application software to improve printing quality on Flexo. In addition, this mentions the potentiality of on-demand package printing onto corrugated board and folding carton.
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  • Yoshikazu NAKAO
    2006 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 266-271
    Published: 2006
    Released on J-STAGE: August 15, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Thanks to recent developments of digital plate and laser imaging technologies, quality of flexography has been improved significantly. However, appropriate control of unique behavior and characteristics of flexo printing remain to be a major challenge in achieving superior print results. One of the important aspects of flexo process that determines final print quality is to control the ink behavior in highlight and shadow areas. Recent development of special screening technologies, such as "Groovy Screens", is to achieve better transfer and even distribution of ink at shadow and solid areas, and "Perfect Highlight" screening which helps to prevent undesirable highlight breaks and excessive dot from gaining drastically improve visual print quality of shadow and highlight area. I believe implementation of these screening technologies can be a significant contribution for development of new level of flexo printing value in Japan.
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Original Paper
  • Ken'ichi KOSEKI, Michihiro UNO, Yuya TOYOKAWA, Kenji SUZUKI
    2006 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 272-278
    Published: 2006
    Released on J-STAGE: August 15, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    Ink-jet technology has been used for not only printing industry but also printable electronics and other applications. The advantages of UV ink-jet are rapid curing, no-VOC, and adhesion on non-porous substrates, and UV ink-jet is one of current trends in industrial ink-jet market. In this paper, the fundamental formula of free-radical type UV curable ink-jet ink without solvent was discussed from a viewpoint of chemical structure of monomers. The relationship between these formulas and the adhesion property on plastic substrate such as PET and PVC was also investigated. As result, UV curable jet ink formulated by flexible monomers showed higher conversion of acryloyl group, but the relations between conversion and adhesion was not found. The adhesion property of UV ink was greatly depended on the difference of surface energy between plastic substrate and ink itself. The ink with our trial formula could be used in piezoelectric printer head with increasing internal temperature of the head around 35-40°C.
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Technical Paper
  • Tomonori YUASA, Hiromichi MISHINA
    2006 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 279-287
    Published: 2006
    Released on J-STAGE: August 15, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    As for control information of the printing machine, since the material characteristics, such as paper and ink, greatly influence the printing quality, every status judgment becomes very important. At present, the process of the parts, such as the initial setting before job beginning, is automated, but finally, there is still a part where it relies on operator's know-how. Before the serious engineer shortage in the future, how to accumulate the useful information and know-how, and how to use them will be an important problem. It is the AMPAC that we proposed from the past that can solve these problems. The AMPAC proposes the unique format for describing the single parameter of whole field of design, production and management. We developed the application that presumed best information for the control of the printing machine from accumulated information. We can use accumulated information effectively by using this application. Control information but also trouble information accumulates similarly; it is also possible to correspond to remote maintenance.
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  • Hideo ABE, Tatsuo ITO, Kazuo MATSUNAGA, Tohru WATANABE
    2006 Volume 43 Issue 4 Pages 288-295
    Published: 2006
    Released on J-STAGE: August 15, 2009
    JOURNAL FREE ACCESS
    The concentration of hardener in the copper plating solution was estimated by measuring the physical properties of electrodeposited film. The COSMO G series(Daiwa Special Chemical Co., Ltd.)were used as additive agents, consisting of G-MU, G-1, and G-2. The G-MU consists of the brightener, polymer, and leveler. The G-1 was used as the hardener The G-2 was used as the refill for G-MU. The elongation with increasing the concentration of G-MU, but the hardness, glossiness, and number of scratches decreases with increasing this concentration. The hardness of electrodeposited film increases with increasing the concentration of G-1, whereas the elongation decreased exponentially with that of G-1.The concentration of G-1 was found to contribute to the physical properties from the fact that the hardness increases gradually and the elongation decreased exponentially with increasing the concentrations of both G-1 and G-MU. It was found that the concentration of G-1 containing the hardener in the plating solution could be estimated using the equation simulated from the multiple regression analysis. The correlation coefficient of the applied and estimated concentration of G-1 was 0.962 when the concentration of G-1 varied from 0.5 to 7ml⁄l.
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