When you pick up wrap a birthday present, you are most likely handling a product printed via the flexographic process.
In contrast to offset printing[printing?:printing cutting finishing solution], which is a planographic printing technique in which the image- and non-image areas of a print[print?:printing image graphic cutting solution] job are on the same level on a printing plate, flexography is a relief printing process.
That is, the image area is raised above the non-image area. Cutting a relief image in a linoleum block -- or even in a potato, as many of us did as children -- and then pressing the block (or potato) into ink and then onto paper[paper?:paper sample maker cutting machine] approximates the flexographic process.
The inks can be either water-based or solvent-based, and both sheetfed and web presses can be built for flexographic printing.
Unlike offset printing, flexography does not transfer the image from the printing plate to a blanket and then to the paper. Instead, flexography, like letterpress, transfers the ink directly from the plate to the paper. But whereas letterpress plates are made of metal, flexographic plates are made from a more flexible substance such as rubber or photopolymer materials.
Flexography is most often used for printed products such as envelopes, bags, tags, wrapping paper, corrugated boxes, milk cartons, newspapers, packaging[packaging?:DCP-H series packaging sample cutter plotter], pressure-sensitive labels, and flexible films.
Why is this process so useful for printing these specific items?
First of all, the ink used in flexography dries very quickly. This makes it perfect for non-porous materials such as plastics and foils. It is also ideal for printing on packaging materials, since the soft rubber plates don’t crush thick, compressible materials like corrugated cardboard.
