Widely used air-cushion blankets and their advantages

50 years ago, blankets were made of natural rubber (india-rubber) and were later replaced by synthetic rubber, such as the standard orange blankets of the Heidelberger GTO and Kord printing presses. The third generation is now commonly used air cushions. Blanket (appeared around 1960). The first piece of air-cushioned rubber was “vulkan714”, followed by a perfect dot. This eraser is still used today as the standard material for most of the Heidelberg presses. The blanket brands commonly used in Hong Kong include Meiji in Japan, Phoenix in Germany, vulkan, printec, and the United States.

Air-cushion blankets can be widely adopted mainly because they have the ability to reduce the resilience to paper adhesion and good dot-reduction ability. The surface and structure of the air-cushion rubber affect its characteristics, so the traditional rubber has been rarely used. (The requirements of the blanket can refer to din16621).

Air-cushion blankets advantages:

First, the linear speed of printing plate and rubber roller is better;

Second, high degree of network restoration;

Third, reduce the deformation caused by the substrate;

Fourth, reduce the friction on the layout (off edition).

As mentioned before, blankets have a great influence on the quality of printing, so it is very important in terms of selection and care. First of all, pay attention to the structure of the blanket, such as fiber layer, back to the air cushion layer; the surface layer is a smooth or rough (hard) surface? Is the surface layer milled or made of chemical tissue? Of course, the structure and organization of the blanket is still the manufacturer's secret, and we cannot know it.

The blanket has a fibrous layer, an air cushion and a rubber layer, but what we are most interested in is the surface layer. About 80% of the rubber now is a 4-layer structure. : Surface layer (0.35 to 0.4 mm), fibrous layer (about 0.25 to 0.3 mm), air cushion (0.35 to 0.4 mm), base layer (about 0.25 to 0.3 mm).

Air cushions can be divided into three categories: microsphere sealed air cushions, blowing airtight air cushions, salt filter open air cushions. Microsatellite air cushion rubber is more common nowadays. According to experts' advice, the salt filter type air cushion can have a better printing effect. Perfectdot rubber is the blanket of this method.

Most of the printing quality depends on the rubber surface layer, and most of the surface layers are embossed, ground or highly ground. The surface layer also has other factors that affect the printing, such as the viscosity of the paper surface. What is the benefit of using airborne rubber? The air cushion is described as the rubber's ability to rebound. The ability to rebound can cause the rubber to not deform when it is squeezed. This has a positive effect on the reproduction of the dots. In spite of this, many people mistakenly believe that because of the resilience relationship, the intensity of printing is greater (corresponding to flexibility), which is not entirely correct. The corresponding elasticity of the general air-cushion blanket is 4 to 8%, while the conventional blanket is less than 4%.

The blanket is textured, with one part tough and the other flexible. Basically, printers generally ignore the texture of the blanket, because most of the blankets are already cut. However, if the blanket is cut to a small size from a large size, then you have to pay more attention. The blanket must be tough to balance the printing direction. The so-called printing direction usually uses the line as a reference line. In addition, we also need to pay attention to cutting the blanket to a suitable size (not too long, because too long will cause the blanket to loosen on the roller and fall off the blanket, and the blanket of aluminum or iron clip Concave roller!), Others For easy installation, we usually cut a small corner on both sides of the blanket and apply a seal on both sides of the rubber to prevent the water (or car wash) from rising.