The Research Of The Computer Color Matching For The Flexographic Spot-Color Ink

Along with the technical progress and the enhancement of living standard, the quality of packaging and print is expected to be more perfect. The spot-color ink could improve the speed and the quality of the print, and at the same time, it can guarantee the consistency of the color reproduction. The spot-color ink has the effect of anti-counterfeiting. In view of this, more and more spot-color ink will be used in the ink and the printing factories. The emergence of computer color matching makes the matching of spot-color ink more simple, accurate and rapid, which is consistent with the development requirements of the companies.Because of the strong development potential of the flexographic printing, the usage of aqueous spot-color ink is bound to increase. In this paper, the aqueous ink which applies to the flexography used to be the research objective in the study of the computer color matching. The article has developed a computer color matching software, CCM2010. The software uses the single and the two-constant Kubelka-Munk models and the tristimulus matching theory to be theoretical foundation. The software has clean interface, and it is easy to use, and color matching results are accurate and stable. In this paper, the AQDW and TWH ink of Tianjin TOYO ink company limited are used to be the based ink. The standard samples include spot-color inks that matched by TOYO AQDW ink and that matched by TOYO TWH ink, and also the ten spot-color ink choosen from PANTONE CMYK color card. Then experiments are designed to check the effection of the color matching. While analyse and compare the color matching results of the single and the two-constant model, we can see that both of the models could meet the requirement of the color difference for print. Although the two-constant model takes the ink layer thickness and the the basic weight of the substrate into account, but because of the limited of experimental conditions, the color matching result of the two-constant is less satisfactory than the single-constant model. The impact of the substrate and the based ink are discussed in this paper. And the conclusions are obtained that different based ink have the close color matching results, and different substrates bring about great changes in ink prescriptions. It is turned out that substrate could impact the effect of the color reproduction.In this article, using the tricolor, C, M, Y, to be the based ink, the color matching experiments velidate the practicality of the computer color matching, CCM2010. If the count of the based ink increased, and the experimental condition improved, and the arithmetic of the model mended, the software could be more practical.