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UV Curable Inkjet Inks: Is There Anything They CAN'T Do?
| Content Provider | Semantic Scholar |
|---|---|
| Author | Edison, Sara E. Madhusoodhanan, Sachin Nagvekar, Devdatt S. Wilson, D. Ian Ellison, Marclette |
| Copyright Year | 2008 |
| Abstract | ncreasingly, the answer to this question is "not much!" The printing market continually presents new challenges and formulators of UV-curable inkjet inks have risen to the occasion by providing multipurpose inks. It's now possible to digitally print on most substrates. Clear inks provide abrasion resistance with variable-gloss finishes. Formable inks may be printed on flat stock and post-formed. Low-dose curing inks can be printed in rapid, single-pass mode, and LED inks are just around the corner. Introduction Inkjet printing is enjoying a huge surge in popularity due to many factors such as ease of use (graphic manipulations are all done digitally), personalization (each print can be altered via PC), non-contact application so that many different types of media may be used with little fear of processing problems, and vast improvements in both the hardware and fluids to allow companies participating in printing endeavors to supplement and at times even replace their analogue presses with digital inkjet printers. One of the types of hardware experiencing a tremendous amount of advancement is piezoelectric drop-on-demand (DOD) printheads, which have experienced a great deal of improvement in terms of reliability, resolution, and speed, as compared to other inkjet printhead technologies such as continuous inkjet (CIJ, which has very fast print speeds but poor resolution) and thermal inkjet (TIJ, which has fast print speeds and high resolution, but is limited in the type of inks that may be jetted). Among the available ink technologies (solvent, aqueous, hot-melt or phase change, oil based, and UV curable), one fluid type stands out as the leader in growth, and that is UV curable inkjet ink. There are many reasons for the heightened preference of UV curable formulations over other ink choices. Increased restrictions on volatile organic chemicals (VOCs) and hazardous air pollutants (HAPs) have made the 100% reactive UV curable inks increasingly attractive. Instantaneous cure upon exposure to UV radiation is another benefit to these fluids, as the printed product can be immediately packaged for shipping without waiting for the ink to dry and the diminutive UV lamps have a much smaller footprint and consume less power to operate. Also, typical UV curable formulas have a harder, more abrasion resistant surface due to the highly crosslinked polymer network that is formed upon exposure to UV radiation. The focus of this article will be on piezoelectric drop-on-demand printheads and UV curable inkjet ink formulations for the industrial print market. UV curable inkjet printers have been an important part of the graphic arts market for years. More recently, they have begun receiving attention from the industrial printing arena as well. This market encompasses a broad spectrum of printed items that may be part of other products or consist of final products themselves. It is much wider in scope than traditional printing on flat stock for advertising and promotional purposes. It is forecasted that by 2016 the digital industrial print market will be €300.9 billion (see Table 1) Table 1. Summary of digital industrial printing revenue, 2006-16 (€ billion). The wide array of printing applications listed in Table 1 demonstrates the versatility of this technology. One standard inkset will not achieve the desired results for all of these markets – even a UV curable one. Therefore, formulators are faced with the challenge of making custom fluids that will not only meet very specific needs for individual applications, but will also maintain enough broad based properties to make the product viable for a multitude of markets. Adhesion to Non-Traditional Substrates Improvements in the hardware and software have made digital printing even more attractive to the industrial market place. However, the inks that dominate the graphic arts market were designed primarily for a relatively small range of substrates and were not faced with the rigorous requirements that the industrial market calls for. Table 2 displays the breadth of media types found in the industrial arena. |
| File Format | PDF HTM / HTML |
| Alternate Webpage(s) | https://www.radtech.org/proceedings/2008/papers/068.pdf |
| Language | English |
| Access Restriction | Open |
| Content Type | Text |
| Resource Type | Article |
