Carefully consider the ink used

(Think the Ink You're Using is A No-Brainer? Think Again)

With the advent of the new century, isn't everything taken for granted complicated? Over the past two years, the author has learned that complexity is a consistent feature of the printing industry. Therefore, when studying the ink trend, it seems no surprise that all related materials are studied without exception.

According to the president of an ink company in North Wales, Panama, current operators should realize that ink is not a commodity, at least in the printing industry. However, he believes that ink is a daily commodity in some applications, such as the newspaper printing industry uses ink every day.

But on the other hand, ink is a high-tech product and its use is so many that printers should understand the small differences between various inks. For example: technical differences between aqueous inks and UV inks, such as how various inks are used and how they are stored.

Tom. Ji is a vice president of marketing and sales for a counterfeit ink company. He believes that people often have a misunderstanding about security inks and believe that security inks are expensive, but he thinks that people should consider such issues: they can invest in security inks. How much income in gain? In the sales market, retailers always bargain with the dealers. In fact, when ink is used as a daily necessities, it is difficult for the retailers to provide quality assurance.

Just as buyers can get the best performance of the ink without too much effort, the dealer should know that there must be a specific ink (water-based, solvent-based, UV ink) that can adapt to the different needs of the customer.

Some experts believe that the increase in "transparent" printing (printed on transparent plastic substrates) has greatly broadened the scope of use of UV inks. UV inks are characterized by their high strength and low viscosity, which can produce good adhesion, which is important for prints in extreme environments. For example, personal items used in bathrooms are often subjected to steam and water immersion; the food packaging is subjected to a cycle of freezing and thawing. Is the ink resistant? In these cases, UV inks tend to perform better.

In October last year, Karen Chu of the Environmental Protection Society discussed the issue of ink performance at a seminar of the International Printing Ink Research Institute. He talked about the characteristics of flexographic inks; the comparison of the characteristics of waterborne, solvent, and UV inks; and the same Water-based inks have the best economic benefits at the printing speed, followed by solvent inks and finally UV inks.

In fact, everything is very simple, what the buyer has to do is to determine which ink has the best performance, that is, the ink has the best adsorption on the substrate, which type of ink is the most economical, which type of ink is environmentally friendly, and so on. These judgments are much simpler than deciding whether to calculate suspended particles.