Talking about the Development Prospect of Green Ink--UV Ink

The development of foreign UV inks is very fast. In the United States, the largest market for UV inks is offset printing, which accounts for about 40% of the market. Followed by screen printing (30%), the growth in the 1990s was particularly strong, becoming one of the preferred technologies for optical disc manufacturing. European 2000 UV ink products totaled 20,500 tons. The Asian UV ink market started late compared to Europe and the Americas, but the growth rate is not low. Among Asian countries, Japan has the largest market share.

Domestic UV ink development

Although the domestic UV ink market started late, it has been thriving in recent years with the sustained rapid growth of the domestic economy. According to the inaccurate statistics of the China Radiation Society Professional Committee on Radiation Curing, the output of UV inks reached 6,514 tons in 2003, an increase of 64.2% over 2002, with an output value of 441,310,000 yuan, an increase of 55.7% over 2002. Among them, offset printing UV inks, photoimaging resist inks, optical imaging solder mask inks, optical disc inks and other high-grade ink production have greatly increased. Since domestic UV inks have a low starting point and UV inks are favored by the industry, domestic UV inks will have better market prospects and will achieve rapid development in the coming years.

Inverted light

In China, the main substrates for UV printing are non-absorbent materials. In Europe and the United States, printing companies not only use the co-curing process to print the same quality prints as traditional UV inks, but also do not satisfy their high-gloss mirror effects or transparency effects, and further improve this process to achieve more. High printing contrast. To this end, an early version of the so-called "back-lighting process" was developed. At that time, however, some details were not solved, such as adhesion, so they were not really implemented. After several years of improvement, this process has matured. The following section describes the local glazing process using this technique.

Pro-Cure is relative to traditional local glazing. In the past, regardless of the type of glazing (flexographic printing, screen printing, or gravure printing) used for local glazing, the last glazing process must use partial glazing printing in order to achieve high contrast in local graphics. , Polishing and printing accuracy of the key to the glazing process.

The retrograde light process breaks through the above laws and solves the problem of registration. The process flow is as follows.

Before glazing, it is necessary to complete conventional printing and determine that the ink has been completely dried or cured; then, the non-high-light areas on the design draft are printed with transparent reverse ink by offset printing in a wired or offline manner; The printing method applies UV varnish to the printing surface and cures.

At this time, the optical oil forms a small-particle-like ink film by forming a cohesive reaction with the reverse-light-up ink contact region, and forms a mirror surface in the counter-light-up region.

Obviously, with the retro-reflective process, both high-gloss and non-high-gloss effects will be present on the same print. Moreover, because the non-highlighted part is an offset printing, overprinting is accurate, and at the same time, the accuracy of the graphic part of the high light part is also guaranteed.

UV co-curing process

In order to perfect the UV printing process, Grafix, a German UV system manufacturer, cooperated with INX ink company to develop a new UV co-curing process. The process is the use of a new ink technology to break the incompatibility of traditional UV inks and common inks, and then combined with high-power UV curing device to improve the UV ink curing quality, solve some problems in UV printing, and reduce The technical threshold for printers to enter the special printing field.

The characteristics of the UV co-curing process are as follows:

(1) It can be cleaned with general cleaning agent, and the cleaning time is short, avoiding the problem of long downtime in the printing process.
(2) The time required for the conversion between ordinary ink printing and co-curing ink printing is the same as that for normal ink printing, and the operation is simple.
(3) Co-curing inks have the same ink balance in printing as ordinary offset inks. Therefore, problems such as ink emulsification and dirty printing are easily controlled, and the stability of printing quality is improved.
(4) The printing dot is more sharp than the ordinary UV printing, and the surface of the printing ink film is delicate and has the effect of color transparency.
(5) Co-curing ink does not require expensive UV-specific roller.
(6) The overprintability between inks is excellent. Only a set of intermediate seats can be cured to enhance the overprint effect and reduce hardware investment.

Recently, according to agents from EASTAER in China, its UV prepolymer (oligomer) ER-7800U, which is distributed on the current domestic UV market, has received wide attention and intimacy from the industry. And the sales are very good. Especially on the surface of plastics, metal materials, etc., the performance is more outstanding and outstanding, and it is loved by engineering and technical personnel and experts in the industry:
(1) High yellowing resistance. (better than all PUA in the market, the same yellow series)
(2), low shrinkage, high hardness.
(3) High fullness and luster.
(4) to prevent UV baking burst.
(5), low viscosity, low irritation.
(5) Optimize and reduce the cost of paint formulations.

The ER-7800U can be used as the main resin for UV coatings and inks. It can also be used as a recipe to adjust resin properties and reduce formulation costs. Widely used in mobile phones, electronics, electrical appliances, motorcycles, optical discs, metal .... surface UV cover, protective coatings.