Polymer-based Gravure Cylinder Technology for
Gravure Industry
Chandramohan Seetharamiah Srinivasaraju, James Springstead, and Paul D. Fleming III, Western Michigan University; Harvey R. Levenson, California Polytechnic State University
The Gravure industry in North America has been declining and losing market share in package printing for several decades. Researcher, Chandramohan in the prior study summarizes and explains that this decline is mainly due to the overall cost of the conventional chrome cylinder impacted by 1) The number of steps associated with the cylinder preparation, 2) Inability to quickly turn around new cylinders for new and rerun hot jobs resulted in the storage of pre- imaged cylinders in the inventory 3) Conventional cylinder preparation method utilizes hazardous chemicals in the plating process, and the associated toxic chromium-six entering environmental systems of air, water, and soil is heavily regulated by the government and international environmental agencies. 4) The conventional cylinder preparation method requires certification from the government, which require a print business to comply with the rules, and regulations defined for Air and water treatment, training of the employees, use of personal protective equipment, documentation of the treatments, testing, and training, regular auditing, and certification process and its associated fee. The penalty associated with the violation of the defined rules from the print business and with the errors found in the documentation during audits sounds like a burden to the print business and hence they resist bringing the lengthy conventional chromium-based cylinder preparation process in-house. 5) The print business using conventional chrome-based cylinder process usually outsource the cylinder preparation process to a third-party company which further adds its profit margins along with the cost of resources, and transportation of heavy cylinders. This further increases the cost and delays the turnaround time of the cylinders needed for running the new and re-run jobs. Currently, many Research and Development companies inventing and optimizing novel polymer materials suitable for the gravure cylinder preparation system, which eliminates the need for the chrome plating process and addresses the solution to the fore mentioned reasons of declining Conventional chrome-based gravure cylinder technology.
The Gravure industry and printers in America would like to understand how effectively these novel polymer-based gravure cylinder preparation outperform the conventional chrome-based gravure cylinder preparation in terms of cylinder preparation process steps, cost, adoptable to current imaging equipment, and quality of print reproduction. The researcher will collaborate with the print business using the conventional gravure cylinders to estimate the cost advantage that polymer-based cylinders offer, their suitability to be used with existing imaging devices, and their ability to reproduce simple to complex graphic images and functional patterns using respective process color inks and conductive inks. Graphic image quality will be evaluated qualitatively and quantitatively in terms of smoothness of the gradients, color density at various tone percentages on a step wedge, solid density, smoothness of the fine line, quality of reproduction of the text. If the novel polymer-based gravure cylinder technology is proven viable to replace conventional chrome-based cylinder processes, then it would change the market trajectory of the gravure industry to move towards the direction of regaining package printing market share in North America. Further, the novel polymer-based gravure cylinder would open doors of further research and optimization for other applications such as coating, printed conductive electrodes used in electronic gadgets, heat, humidity, pressure, and other various types of sensors used in medical, and electrodes printed on current collectors for energy storage devices.