Acrylic.
Type of plastic, used sometimes as a rope on some of the luxury carrier bags.

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Anilox.
In printing, anilox is a method used to provide a measured amount of ink to a flexo printing plate.

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Art paper.
A paper evenly coated with a fine clay compound, which creates a hard smooth surface on one or both sides. Mainly used for carrierbags from the Far East.

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Artwork.
The complete material including type, pictures, diagrams and photos from which film is made for production of printing plates. Artwork can be digital or manual. Accepted digital formats include .ai, .eps, high resolution .pdf and high resolution .jpg.

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Bleached White Kraft.
Common paper bag or counterbag material. Bleached using non chemical methods. Kraft derived from the german for strong.

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Blocks.
Used for Flexographic printing. Usually one block is required per colour each side of the bag being printed. Also called stereos, printing plates or "Cyrels", which is the name given by Dupont to their stereo material product. Broadly, blocks cost according to their size, which is dictated by the size of the image to be printed. The blocks are placed on a cylinder which rotates, collecting ink from the Anolox, and place the ink on the substrate.

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Brown Kraft.
Unbleached Kraft paper, available in plain or with a ribbed effect.

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CI Press.
The common impression (CIS) is a very common type of press used by the Flexo industry. This press is made up of one large impression cylinder with the printing units around it. Each printing unit consists of an Fountain roll, Anilox roll and a plate roll. As the cylinders rotate, the substrate is fed between the plate cylinder and the common impression cylinder so that an image will be placed in the same position on every piece.

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Coated.
Can be clay or other material coated on to paper to make it smoother and less absorbent to ink. Produces a smooth finish which can provide a better print but can rub off and crack on folds taking the ink with it. Therefore usually laminated to protect the ink from cracking.

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Co-extrusion.
The process of extruding two or more materials through a single die with two or more orifices arranged so that the extrudates merge and weld together into a laminar structure before chilling.

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Corona Treatment. By increasing a material's surface tension, corona treating makes inks, films, adhesives, and other coatings more adherent.

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Cotton.
Used as a rope handle in some of the luxury carrier bags.

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Cylinder.
Printing blocks are placed on a cylinder and each turn of the cylinder prints one image. The circumference of the cylinder dictates the bag width or height.

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Cyrel.
The material from which many plate manufacturers use to make printing plates.

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Designers.
Those who create designs. The world would be poorer without designers. As printers we know that we have to Proof a design to the client to ensure that the Artwork supplied will produce the result the client is expecting.

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Dispro.
The process of compensating for the stretch of a block when placed around a cylinder

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DPI.
Dots per Inch. Tones and process print are produced by printing millions of tiny dots of each selected colour. Graduations and photographic effects are therefore possible. DPI refers to the number of dots per line inch, so it is a measure of courseness or fineness of print. Typical dpi's are 55dpi for a Flexo Stack Press, to 100-130 for a Flexo CI Press. 175dpi is fairly typical for offset litho in carrierbag printing, dependent on paper finish. Please note the metric equivelant is dots per centimetre- expect about 2.54 times less! Beware that inch or centimetre is often unspecified. Also: LPI. Lines per inch, same as DPI. Don't confuse DPI with Percentage which is the size of the dot. See "Percentage"

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Duffle.
A style of carrierbag. A rope attached to base for carrying also closes top.

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Embossing.
Creating a raised area, eg over text to enhance it. Embossing does not have to follow a print area: blind embossing. Debossing is to produce a depressed area to similar effect.

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Extruder.
A machine which produces Polyethylene film. Granules are melted and drawn out in a tube bubble to cool. The quicker the film is drawn out, the thinner the film, and the bigger the bubble, the wider the film. The tube is often then slit and wound ready for printing.

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Film Positive.
Film output as positives will show the image to be printed as opaque black. Non-printing areas will show as clear. Ab old method of supplying artwork for plate manufacture.

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Flexographic Printing.
A printing method used for printing polythene and paper. A machine printing process that utilizes rollers or cylinders with a flexible rubber-like surface that prints with the raised area, much like surface printing, but with much less ink. This means the ink dries quickly and allows the machine to run at high speed. The finished product has a very smooth finish with crisp detail and often resembles rotary screen printing.

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Gauge.
One thousand of an inch. A British Imperial Unit of measurement to measure the thickness of polythene film, still widely used within the industry. Slowly giving way to metric. Conversion: 4 gauge = 1 Micron.

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Glassine.
See Greaseproof.

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Grain.
The Grain direction is the direction that most of the paper fibers lay longitudinally in a sheet of paper. The paper fibers lay parallel to the direction in which the paper is made on the paper machine.

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Gravure.
A method of transferring images to paper from an intaglio (recessed) surface, as from an etching or engraving; sheet-fed gravure prints on individual sheets; rotary gravure prints onto a web or roll of paper or plastic

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Greaseproof.
A grease & fat resistant paper. Also Glassine (Least resistant), Vegetable Parchment(more resistant than Glassine, whiter than Greaseproof) Greaseproof (most resistant)

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GSM.
Or Grammage. The weight per unit of paper, measured in grams per square metre. It is worth remembering, if you buy a lot paper, that it is a measurement of weight, not thickness or strength. A Kraft, which is relatively dense and with long strong fibres, will be thinner than a bulkier, less dense Art of the same GSM. The Kraft is likely to be stronger, but the Art may well exhibit more bulk and be more rigid.

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Gusset
The fold in the side or bottom of the bag, allowing it to expand when contents are inserted. Usually denoted by the final number in the bag's dimensions.

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HDPE.
High Density Polyethylene. The high density refers to the density of molecule chain in the polyethylene. More "crinkly and crackly" than LDPE, and can be supplied as thin film, eg 8-18 Micron economical counterbag or carrierbag, or as "thick film" 30-120 Micron carrierbag.

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Kraft.
A paper or board containing unbleached wood pulp (brown in color) made by the sulfate process.

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Laminate.
a thin transparent plastic coating applied to paper or board to provide protection and give it, for example, a glossy finish. Laminates can be overprinted with Hot Foil and Gloss or Matt UV varnishes. Generally 12 Micron thick (gloss) or 15 Micron thick, (matt) and adds about 30 GSM. weight to the finished product.

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LDPE.
Low Density Polyethylene. The low density refers to the density of molecule chain in the polyethylene. It is more elastic (stretchy) and tears less easily than HDPE. It has a softer feel and is more glossy than HDPE. Can be mixed with HDPE to make a blend.

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