Dust removal and static elimination system reduces dirt on label printing

In the label production process, tiny pollutants in the air are one of the culprits causing waste (scrap and production stoppages). The printing factory is currently faced with this problem and can not do anything. The printing company believes that the material supplier film is not clean, and the supplier accused the printing factory of the bad working environment. Both sides are caught in a dilemma.

Label materials are very sensitive to electrostatic accumulation. The accumulated electrostatic image is a magnet attracting contaminants around the surface of the raw material. These contaminants may come from packaging, clothing fibers, hair, cutting dust, ink, metal dust, etc., all of which can cause printing problems.

There are two main reasons why airborne pollutants can cause waste in flexographic printing plants:

1. Contaminants are transferred from the substrate to the impression cylinder

This situation can cause image errors in printed products. The general approach is to shut down and clean all the impression cylinders. The cleaning process typically requires 1 to 2 hours of downtime, resulting in 50/100 meters of waste.

2. Contaminants are transferred directly from the substrate to the plate roller

This situation causes a solid particle on the plate roller. If the UV ink is used in a very thin and very sticky situation, this situation will be even worse, and a very small dust will stick to the plate to form repetitive errors. The operator uses a soft brush or rag to clean the running plate cutter. First of all, such an approach is not safe. In addition, if it cannot be removed, the operator must stop, clean all the plate rollers, re-register the machine, and check the print and quality again. This process will produce 50 meters of waste, loss of production time, and more importantly, the problem has not been fundamentally resolved.

Solution - Cleaning Substrates

It sounds very simple and obvious, but what do you use to clean the substrate?

In the past few years, the promotion of contact-based cleaning technology has brought benefits to the label printing industry. This innovative cleaning method was originally developed for the electronics industry and is now being selected and used by the world's major printing equipment manufacturers and label printing companies to integrate into their production systems.

Use a dust-removing electrostatic cleaning system to polymerize the cleaning roller to clean the sheet. The cleaning roller removes dry, separate contaminants from the substrate and transfers it to a unique counter-wound roll of paper that is electrostatically cleaned by Tec. When sticky paper is full of contaminants, replace the sticky paper and continue cleaning without interruption. The cleaning technology of the dust-removing electrostatic cleaning system removes contamination as small as 2 microns from the surface of the substrate.

How to save it?

The use of dust-removing electrostatic cleaning systems in label printing production results in reduced scrap and downtime.

For example, a 4-color 345 mm flexo press runs different printing materials. Under normal conditions, 8 hours of operation per shift will have 4 solid particles on the plate roller. Based on a large number of empirical examples, the electrostatic dust removal system will reduce the possibility of more than half of the generation of solid particles.

Assume that the dust removal and static elimination system only prevents one stop/shift (normally more than two times during the management), each stop 20 minutes (minimum estimate), generates about 100 meters of waste, and the printing plant works 50 weeks per year. Weekly production for 5 days.

Save label raw material calculation results:

Annual savings of 1 printing press material = 100 x 5 x 50 = 25000

25000 x 0.345 = 8625 (square meters)