The characteristics of five kinds of UV ink
At present, UV ink is widely respected by printing manufacturers. And UV ink is an economical and environmentally friendly ink, which is the direction of ink development in the future. The types and characteristics of UV inks are introduced below.
In terms of UV special inks, UV gold and silver inks, UV fluorescent inks, UV invisible light (infrared light, ultraviolet light) color inks, UV pearl inks, UV anhydrous inks, etc. are all used in the packaging field. When sheet-fed offset printing machine prints non-absorbent substrates or thick paper, the use of UV ink can achieve instant drying without powder spraying, and the printed products can be piled up and processed immediately, without the problem of backside sticking. UV ink is widely used in the printing of food packaging and cosmetic packaging made of cardboard and polyethylene coated paper.
UV inks are bright in color and have excellent abrasion resistance, which is very suitable for printing on packaging and book covers. Due to the instant curing characteristics of UV ink, it can be printed on non-absorbent printing materials, such as metal foil, holographic film, synthetic paper printing; transparent film printing, especially in PVC cash cards, credit cards or PET prepaid cards and other cards Printing has been widely used, and these are areas that ordinary offset printing inks cannot set foot in. In addition, UV offset printing inks are also widely used in the printing of bills such as direct mail and business forms. From the perspective of development, the largest market for UV inks will be UV offset printing inks. In addition, the offset printing machine is equipped with a box-type on-line coating device using flexographic ink or a double-coating roller coating device, which indicates that the printing machine is developing towards combination. In the packaging field, efforts will be made to promote the development of high value-added printed products in the future.
Compared with traditional water-based and solvent-based flexo printing inks, UV flexo printing inks have different components except for the same coloring components and additives.
Water-based and solvent-based flexo printing inks are mainly dried by hot air evaporation. UV flexo printing inks do not contain volatile components, and use ultraviolet rays emitted by UV lamps to polymerize oligomers and monomers to cure the ink. UV printing does not require large hot air drying equipment, saving space. Instant curing by UV lamps generates very little heat, and can be used for printing materials such as heat-shrinkable films that cannot be printed due to shrinkage caused by hot air dryers. Its cured ink film is tough, with excellent abrasion resistance, water resistance, and solvent resistance. Cardboard printing using UV flexo ink developed in Europe and the United States takes advantage of this abrasion resistance and high gloss characteristics.
However, UV flexo printing inks also have shortcomings, and these shortcomings have become an important factor in the development of flexo printing as we expect today. Especially in terms of cost, the unit price of UV flexo printing ink is several times that of water-based flexo printing ink. However, UV flexo inks have obvious advantages in terms of operability, and sometimes they are lower than water-based inks in terms of overall cost.
3. UV gravure printing ink
The ink film thickness of gravure printing is between silk screen printing and offset printing. People hope that the imitation metal etching, ice flower texture and refraction effect that can only be printed by silk screen printing in the past can be replaced by gravure UV printing to give full play to the long-run gravure printing. , The advantages of high speed to avoid the disadvantages of slow screen printing speed and low efficiency. In the development process of "screen printing to gravure printing" process improvement, gravure UV ink plays an increasingly important role. In the past, due to the fast gravure printing speed, the UV gravure decorative printing ink used in packaging printing was difficult to cure completely due to the thick ink layer, and the curing speed was extremely slow. For this reason, except for a few very expensive UV gravure color inks and UV varnishes for printing banknotes, the large-scale use of gravure UV inks is limited.
At present, UV gravure decorative inks with fast curing speed, good print consistency and thick ink layer have been mass-produced in China. Such as better brightness, suitable for printing UV gravure inks with refraction patterns; and high gloss, strong three-dimensional printing lines, suitable for printing high-brightness, dynamic patterns UV gravure inks; printing inks are full, imitating metal etching Pattern-based UV gravure inks and brocade forging effect UV gravure inks have been widely used.
4. UV screen printing ink
Using some decorative UV inks in screen printing can produce some special effects and realize the decoration of the printed matter surface. UV inks are widely used in screen printing. There are many varieties of UV screen printing inks, mainly glass inks. Metal oil, plastic ink, CD ink, expansion ink, foam ink, matte ink, metal matte ink, wrinkle ink, ice flower ink and other LTV inks.
UV glass ink is specially used for printing various glass products, low temperature fast curing, high hardness, good fastness, strong water resistance; UV metal ink, no smell. Fast curing without blocking the network. Bright color, good fastness, used for screen printing copper. aluminum, iron. Stainless steel and other metal substrates; UV plastic ink. There are many colors for printing PET mirror gold. Silver cardboard. Cosmetic bottles, plastic substrates, excellent adhesion fastness, fast curing; UV disc ink, used for printing discs, fast curing, low shrinkage, good fastness, bright colors, good bonding between color layers; UV matte ink , suitable for printing all kinds of gold and silver cardboard, plastic film, the ink is odorless and tasteless, no irritation to the skin, strong sandy feeling, good toughness of the cured film, excellent adhesion; UV ice flower ink has the characteristics of fast curing, the pattern can be It can be large or small, easy to control, the color of the ice flower can be dark or light, and the pattern will not be affected. The above UV screen printing ink varieties are sold in the market. There are also many manufacturers.
In addition, it is currently a trend in the development of printing machines to combine screen printing with gravure printing, flexographic printing, and offset printing units, and the screen printing unit must use UV ink.
5. UV inkjet ink
UV inkjet ink, used in flatbed inkjet printers with piezoelectric nozzle technology. Piezoelectric print head technology is also used today on hybrid presses and stand-alone presses. These new areas using inkjet inks present an opportunity for UV inks to reach the scale levels currently available in screen printing.
The advantages of UV inkjet ink are mainly manifested in: fast curing; suitable for a variety of soft and hard substrates; will not cure before UV light irradiation; does not block the nozzle, no need to clean the nozzle; has good printing quality and Resistance (friction resistance, water resistance, light resistance), UV inkjet inks are developing rapidly.
For more ink information, please pay attention to ink manufacturers.
