History and development
In the 19th century, a number of developments in photography allowed the production of photo-mechanical printing plates. Henry Fox Talbot mentions in 1852 the use of a textile in the photographic process to create half-tones in the printing plate. [1] : 19–21 A French patent in 1860 describes a reel-fed gravure press. [1] : 22 A collaboration between Karel Klič and Samuel Fawcett, in Lancaster resulted in the founding of the Rembrandt Intaglio Printing Company in 1895, which company produced art prints. [2] [3] In 1906 they marketed the first multi-colour gravure print. [1] : 30–50
In 1912 Messrs Bruckman in Munich produced proofs for Bavarian postage stamps which went into production in 1914. Also in 1912 newspaper supplements printed by reel-fed gravure were on sale in London and Berlin ( The Illustrated London News and Der Weltspiegel). [1] : 128
Irving Berlin's song "Easter Parade" specifically refers to this type of supplements in the lines "the photographers will snap us, and you'll find that you're in the rotogravure." And the song "Hooray for Hollywood" contains the line "…armed with photos from local rotos" referring to young actresses hoping to make it in the movie industry. In 1976, ex-Beatle Ringo Starr released an album titled Ringo's Rotogravure .
Gravure is one of several printing techniques being actively used in the field of printed electronics.
Process and components
In direct gravure printing, the ink is applied directly to the cylinder and from the cylinder it is transferred to the substrate. One printing unit consists of the following components:
- an engraved cylinder (also known as "gravure cylinder") whose circumference can differ according to the layout of the product being made.
- an ink fountain
- a doctor blade assembly
- an impression roller
- a dryer
For indirect gravure processes, the engraved cylinder transfers ink in the desired areas to a transfer roller, and the transfer roller transfers it to the substrate.
Engraved cylinder
The first step of Gravure is to create the cylinder with the engraved images that need to be printed: the engraving process will create on the cylinder surface the cells that will contain the ink in order to transfer it to the paper. Since the amount of ink contained in the cells corresponds to different colour intensities on the paper, the dimensions of the cells must be carefully set: deeper or larger cells will produce more intense colours whereas smaller cells will produce less intense ones. There are three methods of photoengraving that have been used for engraving of gravure cylinders, where the cell open size or the depth of cells can be uniform or variable:
| Method | cell size | cell depth |
|---|
| Conventional | uniform | variable |
| "Two positive" or "Lateral hard dot" | variable | variable |
| Direct transfer | variable | uniform |
Gravure cylinders are usually made of steel and plated with copper, though other materials, e.g. ceramics can also be used. The desired pattern is achieved by engraving with a laser or a diamond tool, or by chemical etching. If the cylinder is chemically etched, a resist (in the form of a negative image) is transferred to the cylinder before etching. The resist protects the non-image areas of the cylinder from the etchant. After etching, the resist is stripped off. The operation is analogous to the manufacture of printed circuit boards. Following engraving, the cylinder is proofed and tested, reworked if necessary, and then chrome plated.
Process
While the press is in operation, the engraved cylinder is partially immersed in the ink tray, filling the recessed cells. As the cylinder rotates, it draws excess ink onto its surface and into the cells. Acting as a squeegee, the doctor blade scrapes the cylinder before it makes contact with the paper, removing the excess ink from the non-printing (non-recessed) areas and leaving in the cells the right amount of ink required. The position of the blade relative to the nip is normally variable.
Next, the substrate gets sandwiched between the impression roller and the gravure cylinder: this is where the ink gets transferred from the recessed cells to the web. The purpose of the impression roller is to apply force, ensuring that the entire substrate is brought into contact with the gravure cylinder, which in turn ensures even and maximum coverage of the ink. Once in contact with the substrate, the ink's surface tension pulls (part of) the ink out of the cell and transfers it to the substrate.
Then the inked substrate goes through a dryer because it must be completely dry before going through the next color unit and accepting another coat of ink. A rotogravure printing press has one printing unit for each color, typically CMYK or cyan, magenta, yellow and key (printing terminology for black), but the number of units varies depending on what colors are required to produce the final image. [4]
Features
Because gravure is capable of transferring more ink to the paper than most other printing processes, it is noted for its remarkable density range (light to shadow) and hence is a process of choice for fine art and photography reproduction, though not typically as clean an image as that of offset lithography. A shortcoming of gravure is that all images, including type and "solids," are actually printed as dots, and unless the ink and substrate combination is set up to allow solid areas to flow together, the screen pattern of these dots can be visible to the naked eye.
Gravure is an industrial printing process capable of consistent high quality printing. Since the Gravure printing process requires the creation of one cylinder for each colour of the final image, it is expensive for short runs and best suited for high volume printing. Typical uses include long-run magazines in excess of 1 million copies, mail order catalogs, consumer packaging, Sunday newspaper ad inserts, wallpaper and laminates for furniture where quality and consistency are desired. Another application area of gravure printing is in the flexible-packaging sector. A wide range of substrates such as polyethylene, polypropylene, polyester, BOPP, etc. can be printed in the gravure press. Gravure printing is one of the common processes used in the converting industry.
Rotogravure presses for publication run at 45 feet (14 m) per second and more, with paper reel widths of over 10 feet (3 m), enabling an eight-unit press to print about seven million four-color pages per hour.
The vast majority of gravure presses print on rolls (also known as webs) of paper or other substrates, rather than sheets. (Sheetfed gravure is a small, specialty market.) Rotary gravure presses are the fastest and widest presses in operation, printing everything from narrow labels to 12-foot-wide (3.66-meter-wide) rolls of vinyl flooring. For maximum efficiency, gravure presses operate at high speeds producing large diameter, wide rolls. These are then cut or slit down to the finished roll size on a slitting machine or slitter rewinder. Additional operations may be in line with a gravure press, such as saddle stitching facilities for magazine or brochure work.
Advantages
Although the rotogravure printing process is not the most popular printing process used in flexible-packaging manufacturing, it does have the ability to print on thin film such as polyester, polypropylene, nylon, and polyethylene, which come in a wide range of thicknesses, commonly 10 to 30 micrometers.
Other appreciated features include:
- printing cylinders that can last through large-volume runs without the image degrading
- good quality image reproduction
- low per-unit costs running high volume production
Disadvantages
Shortcomings of the gravure printing process include:
- high start-up costs: hundreds of thousands of copies needed to make it profitable
- rasterized lines and texts
- long lead time for cylinder preparation, which is offsite as the techniques used are so specialized
- rotogravure cylinder manufacturing utilizes Hexavalent Chromium electroplating. OSHA states "All hexavalent chromium compounds are considered carcinogenic to workers" https://www.osha.gov/hexavalent-chromium/health-effects
Lithography is a planographic method of printing originally based on the immiscibility of oil and water. The printing is from a stone or a metal plate with a smooth surface. It was invented in 1796 by the German author and actor Alois Senefelder and was initially used mostly for musical scores and maps. Lithography can be used to print text or images onto paper or other suitable material. A lithograph is something printed by lithography, but this term is only used for fine art prints and some other, mostly older, types of printed matter, not for those made by modern commercial lithography.
Printmaking is the process of creating artworks by printing, normally on paper, but also on fabric, wood, metal, and other surfaces. "Traditional printmaking" normally covers only the process of creating prints using a hand processed technique, rather than a photographic reproduction of a visual artwork which would be printed using an electronic machine ; however, there is some cross-over between traditional and digital printmaking, including risograph.
Printing is a process for mass reproducing text and images using a master form or template. The earliest non-paper products involving printing include cylinder seals and objects such as the Cyrus Cylinder and the Cylinders of Nabonidus. The earliest known form of printing evolved from ink rubbings made on paper or cloth from texts on stone tablets, used during the sixth century. Printing by pressing an inked image onto paper appeared later that century. Later developments in printing technology include the movable type invented by Bi Sheng around 1040 and the printing press invented by Johannes Gutenberg in the 15th century. The technology of printing played a key role in the development of the Renaissance and the Scientific Revolution and laid the material basis for the modern knowledge-based economy and the spread of learning to the masses.
Engraving is the practice of incising a design on a hard, usually flat surface by cutting grooves into it with a burin. The result may be a decorated object in itself, as when silver, gold, steel, or glass are engraved, or may provide an intaglio printing plate, of copper or another metal, for printing images on paper as prints or illustrations; these images are also called "engravings". Engraving is one of the oldest and most important techniques in printmaking. Wood engraving is a form of relief printing and is not covered in this article, same with rock engravings like petroglyphs.
Flexography is a form of printing process which utilizes a flexible relief plate. It is essentially a modern version of letterpress, evolved with high speed rotary functionality, which can be used for printing on almost any type of substrate, including plastic, metallic films, cellophane, and paper. It is widely used for printing on the non-porous substrates required for various types of food packaging.
In printing, anilox is a method used to provide a measured amount of ink to a flexographic (flexo) printing plate. An anilox roll is a hard cylinder, usually constructed of a steel or aluminum core which is coated by an industrial ceramic, typically chromium(III) oxide powder, whose surface is engraved with millions of very fine dimples, known as anilox cells. In the printing process, the anilox roll is coated in a precise layer of ink that is then transferred to the raised portions of the printing plate. The number, size, and geometry of the anilox cells vary and will determine the amount of ink that the anilox roll delivers to the plate.
A rotary printing press is a printing press in which the images to be printed are curved around a cylinder. Printing can be done on various substrates, including paper, cardboard, and plastic. Substrates can be sheet feed or unwound on a continuous roll through the press to be printed and further modified if required. Printing presses that use continuous rolls are sometimes referred to as "web presses".
Digital printing is a method of printing from a digital-based image directly to a variety of media. It usually refers to professional printing where small-run jobs from desktop publishing and other digital sources are printed using large-format and/or high-volume laser or inkjet printers.
Offset printing is a common printing technique in which the inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket and then to the printing surface. When used in combination with the lithographic process, which is based on the repulsion of oil and water, the offset technique employs a flat (planographic) image carrier. Ink rollers transfer ink to the image areas of the image carrier, while a water roller applies a water-based film to the non-image areas.
Photogravure is a process for printing photographs, also sometimes used for reproductive intaglio printmaking. It is a photo-mechanical process whereby a copper plate is grained and then coated with a light-sensitive gelatin tissue which had been exposed to a film positive, and then etched, resulting in a high quality intaglio plate that can reproduce detailed continuous tones of a photograph.
Laser engraving is the practice of using lasers to engrave an object. The engraving process renders a design by physically cutting into the object to remove material. The technique does not involve the use of inks or tool bits that contact the engraving surface and wear out, giving it an advantage over alternative marking technologies, where inks or bit heads have to be replaced regularly.
Intaglio is the family of printing and printmaking techniques in which the image is incised into a surface and the incised line or sunken area holds the ink. It is the direct opposite of a relief print where the parts of the matrix that make the image stand above the main surface.
Line engraving is a term for engraved images printed on paper to be used as prints or illustrations. The term is mainly used in connection with 18th- or 19th-century commercial illustrations for magazines and books or reproductions of paintings. It is not a technical term in printmaking, and can cover a variety of techniques, giving similar results.
Viscosity printing is a multi-color printmaking technique that incorporates principles of relief printing and intaglio printing. It was pioneered by Stanley William Hayter.
Steel engraving is a technique for printing illustrations based on steel instead of copper. It has been rarely used in artistic printmaking, although it was much used for reproductions in the 19th century. Steel engraving was introduced in 1792 by Jacob Perkins (1766–1849), an American inventor, for banknote printing. When Perkins moved to London in 1818, the technique was adapted in 1820 by Charles Warren and especially by Charles Heath (1785–1848) for Thomas Campbell's Pleasures of Hope, which contained the first published plates engraved on steel. The new technique only partially replaced the other commercial techniques of that time such as wood engraving, copper engraving and later lithography.
Pad printing is a printing process that can transfer a 2-D image onto a 3-D object. This is accomplished using an indirect offset (gravure) printing process that involves an image being transferred from the cliché via a silicone pad onto a substrate. Pad printing is used for printing on otherwise difficult to print on products in many industries including medical, automotive, promotional, apparel, and electronic objects, as well as appliances, sports equipment and toys. It can also be used to deposit functional materials such as conductive inks, adhesives, dyes and lubricants.
A converter is a company that specializes in modifying or combining raw materials such as polyesters, adhesives, silicone, adhesive tapes, foams, plastics, felts, rubbers, liners and metals, as well as other materials, to create new products.
Roller printing, also called cylinder printing or machine printing, on fabrics is a textile printing process patented by Thomas Bell of Scotland in 1783 in an attempt to reduce the cost of the earlier copperplate printing. This method was used in Lancashire fabric mills to produce cotton dress fabrics from the 1790s, most often reproducing small monochrome patterns characterized by striped motifs and tiny dotted patterns called "machine grounds".
Carbon tissue is a gelatin-based emulsion used as a photoresist in the chemical etching (photoengraving) of gravure cylinders for printing. This was introduced by British physicist and chemist Joseph Swan in 1864. It has been used in photographic reproduction since the early days of photography.
