Gravure printing - WIPF DOYPAK

Wipf Group companies

Gravure printing

We can print up to ten colours with our gravure presses. Our gravure presses deliver outstanding print quality with a very good degree of reproducibility. The main print applications involve films for the food, non-food, pet-food, and pharma segments. In this domain, the trend is heading toward ever more sophisticated state-of-the-art motifs. Our gravure presses allow the application of additional lacquers and printing of special spot colours. Our two gravure presses with 10 printing couples each provide a capacity of 70 million m2 per year.

Printing process

A doctor blade skims the surplus ink off the cylinders to assure that the film can be uniformly and expertly printed. The film is in direct contact with the cylinder and the artwork is printed onto the film with respective ink. After printing, the ink is thermally dried. After drying, the film has to be cooled again to prevent undue head-induced elongation. This is done by running the film over a chill roller. In the end, the film feeds through our 100% web inspection system, and the patterns transferred from the film to the machine are monitored. The cylinders are cleaned with solvent to remove residues.

Cylinders

A cylinder consists of (from the inside to the outside) a cavity enclosed by a steel layer with a thickness of 1 to 1.5 cm, a thin copper layer onto which the artwork is engraved, and a layer of chromium steel.

We distinguish between two types of cylinders:

Partial cylinder: The motif is engraved in the copper layer
Full-area cylinder: The motif is engraved across the entire surface of the copper layer.

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