Determining the Quality of a Reproduction Obtained with Digital Thermal Printing Plates

Abstract

Nowadays, flexographic printing process is the most cost-effective printing technique. Due to its capacity to produce very good print quality it is predominantly used for labelling and packaging applications. Additionally, flexography has become a very strong competition to the gravure printing process in performing more demanding printing tasks. In order to improve reproduction quality obtained by flexographic printing technique, some modifications in producing printing plates have been developed in the recent years. In this paper, two new technologies, DigiCap and SquareSpot, are presented. The aim of the research was to analyse and define the quality of reproduction obtained with DigiCap and SquareSpot technologies in the production of printing plates. The definition of the overall reproduction quality was determined using objective and subjective analysis. Three image quality attributes were observed: line reproduction quality, circularity of dots and dot gain in objective analysis.