Printing Marks in Intelligent Printing Manufacturing | Atonm Knowledge Base

Over more than 40 years since reform and opening up, national economic development has achieved remarkable results. With the disappearance of the demographic dividend, traditional manufacturing competitive advantages based on cheap labor and resources have weakened. Many small and medium printing companies are introducing robots for labor intensive, repetitive tasks such as mark detection, and intelligent printing factories are emerging.

How does "intelligent printing" achieve printing?

An intelligent factory acts like a robot that receives instructions to produce a high-quality product. After receiving color sample information, the smart core matches paper whiteness and grammage, prepares paper, outputs plates via CTP, selects printing parameters, prints and performs inline quality control using mark sensors. Post-processing is routed based on mark sensor signals, enabling largely unmanned operation with human supervision only.

In summary, automation alone is not enough; integrating mark factors and color sensors builds the visual system for intelligent printing, enabling process optimization.

The Importance of Printing Marks in Intelligent Printing

Research on printing marks dates to the 1950s. Marks were originally used to check film density and print color. Definitions vary by country; generally marks are strips used to evaluate printing quality such as dot gain, ghosting and registration accuracy.

How to make marks the soul of intelligent printing?

A common approach is to expand mark usage across the process and integrate marks into more steps. Compared with visual inspection, automated mark-based systems offer standardized color management and quality control.

For example, prepress moves from analog to digital, virtual proofing will become practical, and mark-based color management preserves color data for downstream steps. As human color perception varies, mark-based systems enable standardized, automated color control across the factory.

Atonm CL3 Mark Sensor

"Color + Intensity" dual-mode detection for higher stability and reliability!

Atonm CL3 Mark Sensor is widely used in printing. It features built-in RGB and mark modes, a ~1.5*7mm spot (23mm detection distance), response time <200μs, and stable color detection to avoid false readings.

Intelligent printing is the integration of advanced ICT and manufacturing technologies across design, production and management. Its goal is to optimize resources, increase value and reduce waste.