Across Web - The direction perpendicular to the direction of web travel. Also Cross Web.
Anilox Roll - A ceramic or chromed steel roll engraved to meter fluid ink.
Artwork - The original design, including drawings and text, produced by the artist and intended for reproduction.
Back-Up Blade - A blade that supports the doctor blade.
Backup Roll - An impression cylinder.
Bar Code - Pattern of vertical bars and spaces that encode information so that it is readable by scanning.
Bearers - (1) Metal spacers used to separate the platens when vulcanizing rubber flexo plates. (2) In lithography, the rings used to separate the faces of the plate and blanket cylinders.
Bearer Bars - In flexography, raised areas of printing plates in non-printing areas to support the edges of the plate and to prevent plate bounce.
Blade Coating - A method of applying a pigmented coating to paper or board in which a doctor blade meters and smooths the coating.
Blisterpack - A package consisting of a clear plastic overlay affixed to a cardboard backing for protecting and displaying a product.
Box - A rigid container, usually with a flat bottom and straight sides.
Boxboard - Paper board of sufficient stiffness to be used for paperboard boxes. Commonly used types are: news, field news, chip, straw, jute, patent coated, clay coated.

CPC - Consumer Product Company - A company that identifies consumer needs and produces new product packaging by initiating design and controlling production.
CAD/CAM - Computer aided design or drawing or drafting/computer aided makeup or manufacture. The design and manipulation of images with a computer.
Can - A cylindrical package made of metal, plastic, or paperboard.
Cardboard - A term applied loosely to any paperboard by those unfamiliar with the industry. Correctly, a thin, stiff pasteboard sometimes used for signs or playing cards.
Carrier Sheet - A plastic or metal sheet to which flexographic plates can be adhered before being mounted on the cylinder.
Cell - The chemical, mechanical, or electronically engraved ink receptacle in anilox rolls.
Central Impression - A CI press is one on which the web is supported by a single large impression cylinder while colors are applied from several printing stations around the cylinder.
Chambered ( or Chamber) Blade system - An enclosed anilox inking system in which one blade is used to retain the ink in a well while the other blade meters the ink.
Chill Roll - (1) A roll cooled internally with water or brine, used to cool a web prior to rewinding. (2) In flexography, a roll following a dryer to return the printed web to its original dimensions.
Converter - A manufacturer who produces printed packages or other materials from rolls of paper, film, or foil.
Converter waste - Waste products from paper, paperboard, or other substrate during conversion. It may or may not be printed.
Copolymer - A polymer produced from two or more monomers.
Corrugated Board - A composite paper product made by applying a liner to each side of a fluted or corrugated inner sheet or medium. The liner is usually made from neutral sulfite or recycled board. Variations include single-face board made from a corrugated sheet plus a single liner, double-wall made from two corrugated sheets and three liners, and triple-wall made from three corrugated sheets and four liners.
Corrugated Box - A box made of corrugated board.
Corrugated medium - A board made of a stiff fiber, usually semi-chemical or recycled board, to be corrugated and used as the middle layer in a corrugated board.
Corrugation Marks - (1) Marks resembling ropes or chains in the surface of the paper owing to adjacent hard and soft spots in the web. (2) On printed boxes, the lighter and darker areas created by differential pressure of the printing plate on the substrate.
Cross Web - See Across Web.
Crown - (1) The difference in diameter between the center of a roll and its ends. (2) The closure of a glass bottle that is crimped around the rib of glass at the neck.
Cut - (1) to dilute or thin an ink, lacquer, or varnish. (2) An engraving. (3) A paper defect.
Cut off - See Repeat.
Cutoff Mis-registration - Mis-register in the longitudinal or web direction.
Cylinder Gap - On lithographic presses, the gap or space in the blanket or plate cylinders where the plate or blanket are attached.
Cylinder Machine - A paper manufacturing machine on which the paper or board is formed against cylindrical screens.

Design House - Design houses develop packaging visual designs for consumer product companies.
Die - A sharp cutting form used to cut a desired shape from a sheet or film.
Die cutting - The process of using sharp steel rules to cut special shapes for labels, boxes, and containers and other packaging and printing from printed sheets or webs.
Die-Line - A representation of the structural design of a carton that is used to make a die.
Doctor Blade - A thin flexible steel or plastic blade used (a) to remove excess ink from a gravure cylinder or anilox roll or (b) in blade coating of paper, to remove excess material and smooth the coating.
Doublewall - see Corrugated.
Durometer - An instrument for measuring rubber hardness, used in flexo to measure plate hardness and in offset to measure roll hardness. Also the hardness of the rubber.
Embossing - Production of a raised image in a substrate.
Engraved Roll - A transfer roll with cells engraved mechanically or by laser (see Anilox Roll).
Engraving - (1) A pattern incised or cut into a surface. (2) The process of forming a metal plate with a raised image.
Epoxy Resin - A polymer or plastic used for strong, fast-setting adhesives.
Etch - To eat away a solid, such as metal or glass, to produce an image. Specifically, the process used to produce gravure images with chemicals.
Extrusion - The production of a continuous sheet of film or other shapes by forcing hot plastic through a die or orifice.
Facings - Sheets of linerboard used as the flat members of corrugated board.
Fingerprinting - A study of the printing characteristics of a press on any particular ink and substrate.
Flat Die - A die on a flat base, used in reciprocating die cutters.
Flexible Packaging - Paper, film, or foil printed and converted into pouches or bags for consumer or industrial uses.
Flexography - A method of direct rotary printing using resilient raised-image printing plates, affixed to variable or fixed repeat plate cylinders, inked by a roll or doctor-blade-wiped engraved metal or ceramic coated roll, carrying fluid or paste-type inks to virtually any substrate.
Fluid Ink - An ink of low viscosity used for flexography or gravure. Also called liquid ink.
Flute - A formation of corrugating medium with a cross section of a sine wave. Collectively called corrugations.
Flue Direction - The normal direction of the flutes is parallel to the depth of the box.
Foil - An unsupported thin metal membrane less than 0.006 inch thick.
Folding Carton - A package made of boxboard that is folded flat during shipment and set up or opened at the packaging line.
Formation - The uniformity of distribution of fibers in a paper or board.
FTA - The Flexographic Technical Association, Inc.

GAA - The Gravure Association of America.
Glue Line/Glue Flap/Glue Tab - (1) A line of adhesive between two surfaces to be adhered. (2) The space on a package for placing the adhesive.
Gravure - The printing process using fluid inks in which the image area is depressed in a plate or cylinder and the non-image area is wiped with a doctor blade. It is usually printed from rotary cylinders, in which case gravure is synonymous with rotogravure.
Gravurescope - A microscope designed to study the cells on an engraved cylinder and to measure their depth and width.
Halftone Gravure - The process of producing a gravure cylinder from material prepared for offset reproduction.
Intaglio - A method of printing from an engraved or etched design in which the ink is held in the engraved cells. Intaglio includes gravure and steel plate engraving.
KD Box - A knocked-down box. A folding carton or corrugated box that is shipped flat and erected at the customer's plant.
Kraft - (1) A method of producing paper pulp by treating wood chips with alkali in the presence of sulfide ions. (2) The pulp produced by that method. (3) A strong, stiff paper or board produced from kraft pulp, also called sulfate.
Label - A printed sheet adhered to a package and carrying information about the contents
Lacquer - (1) A Coating solution made by dissolving a natural or synthetic polymer in a solvent. (2) The film produced by coating the solution onto a package.
Laminate (1) To unite layers or materials with adhesives (2) The product made by bonding two or more layers or material.
Layout - Designer's conception of what a printed piece will look like.
Letterset - Printing method using a relief plate that transfers ink to a blanket for delivery to substrate. Also called "dry offset printing".
Linerboard - Paperboard used for liners in corrugated board.
Liquid Ink - See Fluid Ink.
Litho Laminate - A printed sheet that is attached to a single-face corrugated sheet to make a corrugated box. Even if printed by gravure or flexo, such sheets are often referred to as litho laminates.

Metering Blade - See Doctor Blade.
Metering Roll - (1) In flexography, a rubber roll that presses against the anilox roll to remove excess ink. (2) In offset litho, a roll that presses against a roll carrying ink or water to control the amount of ink fed to the press.
Package - Any containing device that can hold, protect, or encase a consumer product.
Photopolymer - A polymer that is chemically altered by exposure to light; used in film, printing plates, and inks.
Polyethylene - A polymer produced by polymerizing ethylene, a monomer containing two carbon atoms, used as a packaging film or molding resin.
Polymer - A compound formed by combining many small, monomeric molecules into one high-molecular-weight compound.
Polyolefin - A polymer produced by polymerizing an olefin, commonly polyethylene or polypropylene, used as a packaging film.
Polypropylene - A polymer produced by polymerizing propylene, a monomer containing three carbon atoms; used as a packaging film or molding resin.
Polystyrene - A polymer produced by polymerizing styrene and used as a packaging material.
Polyvinyl Acetate - A polymer produced by polymerizing vinyl acetate. Often copolymerized with vinyl chloride to produce a resin used for making vinyl films.
Polyvinyl Alcohol - A polymer produced by hydrolyzing polyvinyl acetate and used as a laminate in some clear films, sometimes abbreviated PVOH.
Polyvinyledene Chloride - A polymer produced by polymerizing vinyledene chloride and used as a packaging film.
Prepolymer - A polymer of low molecular weight to be further polymerized.

Relief - In flexography and letterpress, the amount of relief in the printing plate. The distance between the surface of the type and the surface of the base of the plate. Also Undercut.
Relief Printing - Printing from a plate in which the image areas are raised from the non-image areas, such as flexo and letterpress.
Repeat - The printing length of a plate cylinder. The length of an image that can be printed; on most presses this is nearly the same as the circumference of the plate cylinder (Also Cutoff).
Resin - A natural or synthetic material used as a binder or film-forming material in inks or varnishes.
Reverse Printing - Printing on the underside of a transparent film.
Rigid Box - A box made of boxboard that is produced already set up.
Roll-out - A color sample made manually by rolling a sample of ink onto the substrate.
Roll Stock - Paperboard as received and stored by the converter.
Rotogravure - Gravure printing from a cylinder. Since most gravure printing is done in this manner, rotogravure is often called simply gravure.
Rub Resistance - Abrasion resistance.
Score - (1) A groove or crease or a partial cut in a material to facilitate bending or folding. (2) To make such a groove or crease.
Screen Printing - The process of printing in which the image is produced by pressing ink through a stencil supported by a screen. Formerly called Silk Screen.
Serigraphy - A name sometimes applied to screen printing.
Setup Box - A rigid box made of paperboard that is manufactured in the shape of a box by the box maker and shipped in that form.
Sheeting - An unsupported, non-fibrous, flexible material thicker than about 0.010 inch.
Shellac - An alcohol-soluble natural resin widely used in flexo inks.
Shell cup - An efflux cup for measuring viscosity of liquid inks.
Shore Hardness - Hardness as measured by a Shore Durometer. The numbers are usually reported as Shore A for soft materials such as rubber and Shore D for harder materials such as many thermosetting resins.
Side-Lay Mis-register - Mis-register in the lateral or cross-web direction.
Silk Screen Printing - The early name for screen printing.
Slitter-Rewinder - A machine that slits from a master roll and rewinds the strips into rolls of specified length.
Solid Fibre Box - A box made of solid fiberboard produced by laminating two or more plies of containerboard.
Step and Repeat - Preparation of a plate or a film with many copies of the same image.
Stickyback - Double-faced adhesive used for mounting elastomeric printing plates to the plate cylinder.
Stretch/Shrink factors - Calculations of dimensional changes that occur in mounting of photopolymer plates and the molding and mounting of rubber plates.
Striation - A streaky pattern of parallel lines, usually in the direction of the web caused by uneven inking across the web.
Structural CAD System - A structural CAD system is an electronic design workstation used by structural designers to create packages. The system provides information to die-making machinery to produce laser-cut dies. A product of these systems is the electronic die vinyl used for element paste-up on a Macintosh system.
Structural Layout - The exact dimensions of box or display layout in the flat.

Triplewall - See corrugated board.
Tuck - A short inner flap that is part of a one-piece folder.
Varnish - A thin, protective coating applied to a printed sheet for protection or appearance.
Vinyl - (1) Any of a group of polymers made from vinyl monomers such as vinyl chloride or vinyl acetate. (2) Pattern of a cutting and creasing die to serve as an overlay to verify alignment with the printing.
Viscometer - An instrument for measuring viscosity.
Viscosity - The resistance of a fluid to flow.
Vulcanization - Curing of raw rubber or other elastomer to increase its strength and stability.
Web - Thin material such as paper, foil, or film, to be wound, unwound, or printed from a roll.
Web Guide - A device that keeps the web traveling true through the press.
Web Press - A press that prints webs of paper.
Wet Strength - The tensile or burst properties of paper or paperboard when wet.
Wraparound Plate - A thin relief plate used in letterpress printing.
Wrapper - A printed sheet that covers a package and carries information about the contents. The distinction between a label and a wrapper is not always clear. The wrapper on a 3-piece can is usually called a label; the wrapper on a candy bar is usually called flexible packaging; the wrapper on a bar of soap or a package of gum is usually called a wrapper.
Wrong-reading Image - An image that is reversed, a mirror image, such as the image on a letterpress or flexo plate or a gravure cylinder. A right-reading image viewed from the wrong side.
Zahn Cup - An efflux cup for measuring viscosity of liquid inks.