In daily life, cardboard packaging can be seen everywhere, including express delivery boxes, fruit boxes, and household product packaging. Paper box products have become an indispensable part of our daily lives. How much do you know about the machines that produce cardboard boxes? Different types of cardboard boxes require different cardboard box machines. Now, let's talk about the types and characteristics of cardboard box machines.
What machines do cardboard box factories need?
1. Printing machine
The core function of a printing machine is to print high-quality customer specified trademarks, brand logos, text, patterns, barcodes, anti-counterfeiting marks, etc. on the surface of corrugated cardboard.
Commercial value: Enhancing product image, conducting brand promotion and product information display are key steps in transforming "cardboard boxes" into "packaging".
There are two types of printing machines: flexible printing and digital printing
Flexo printing
Features: Using a soft resin plate for printing like a stamp, it is a mainstream medium to high-end cardboard printing method, especially suitable for color dot printing. The printing plate is a soft and elastic photosensitive resin plate. When printing, the mesh roller transfers a certain amount of ink to the printing plate, and the graphic and textual parts (raised parts) on the printing plate then transfer the ink to the cardboard. It can achieve a fine effect almost comparable to offset printing.
Advantages: Low plate making cost, fast speed, wide range of substrates, and environmental friendliness. It is the absolute mainstream technology for corrugated box printing.
Disadvantage: There are certain limitations to the printing precision, such as extremely fine lines and tiny dots.
Water ink printing
Feature: Usually refers to printing performed on ink printing slotting machines. The printing plate is usually a rubber plate (hand carved or laser engraved). Its principle is similar to flexographic printing, both belong to letterpress printing, use rubber plates, and transfer ink through mesh rollers. It is the mainstream printing method for ordinary cardboard boxes, good at text, lines, and solid color blocks, and has low cost.
Advantages: Rubber plate production is simple and fast, laser engraving a plate only takes a few minutes, and the cost is extremely low. It is convenient to change versions, so it is extremely suitable for orders with small batches, multiple batches, and urgent delivery needs.
Disadvantages: The machine speed is relatively slow, and the overall production efficiency of long plate orders is not as good as flexographic printing. Due to the accuracy limitations of the plate and equipment, its printing precision is far inferior to modern flexographic printing.
2. Die cutting machine
The function of the die-cutting machine is to cut the continuously fed cardboard according to the predetermined box length size, separate individual cardboard box pieces, and for irregular cardboard boxes (non-standard rectangles), by installing prefabricated die-cutting plates, the required shape (such as handle holes, windows, special contours, etc.) can be punched out in one go.
3. Slotting machine
The function of the slotting machine is to cut vertical grooves on the cardboard to form neat edges and corners when folding the cardboard box. Usually, it is done both vertically and horizontally to ensure that the bottom and lid of the cardboard box can be perfectly closed.
4. Laminating machine
The function of a laminating machine is to precisely and firmly bond two or more flat sheets of paper (usually face paper and base paper) together with adhesive to form a thicker and stronger composite paperboard.
Working Principle:
Fit: This is the most fundamental function. The machine evenly applies adhesive (such as white latex, environmentally friendly glue) on the base paper (usually corrugated cardboard, such as E-wave, F-wave, micro corrugated, or ordinary gray board paper) through a glue application system (such as rolling glue, scraping glue, spraying glue).
Alignment: Before bonding, the machine needs to ensure that the surface paper (usually beautifully printed copperplate paper, matte paper, special paper, etc.) and the base paper can be accurately aligned. Advanced laminating machines are equipped with photoelectric correction or front and side gauge systems to ensure accurate pattern positioning and no skewing after lamination, which is crucial for subsequent die-cutting processes.
Pressing: After gluing and aligning, the face paper and base paper will be tightly bonded under a certain pressure through a pressure device (such as a pressure roller or a pressing belt), and the air in the middle will be discharged to ensure complete adhesion, no bubbles, and no delamination.
Transportation and collection: Automatically transport the semi-finished products after feeding and bonding, and stack them neatly, making it convenient for workers to take them away for the next process (such as die-cutting), greatly improving production efficiency.
The advantages of a laminating machine are that it can adhere to different materials and characteristics of paper, such as matte, glossy, tactile film, gold and silver cardboard, etc., to achieve rich surface decoration effects.
Compared to traditional manual pasting, automated paper laminating machines have extremely fast speeds (up to thousands of sheets per hour), stable quality, and low scrap rates, making them indispensable equipment for modern cardboard box factories.
5. Adhesive box/nail box equipment:
Semi automatic box nailing machine: used to nail the interface of cardboard boxes with iron nails, easy to operate.
Fully automatic nail box machine: high degree of automation and fast efficiency.
Glue box machine: using glue to bond the interface, the appearance is more beautiful, no need for iron nails, suitable for high-end packaging. It is also divided into semi-automatic and fully automatic.
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