What is the UV ink? What is the advantages and disadvantages?

What is the UV ink? What is the advantages and disadvantages?

The main component of UV curable ink is modified acrylic photopolymerizable resin. The main photosensitive resin is mixed with photoinitiator, pigment and additives. When exposed to UV light, the photosensitive resin undergoes photopolymerization reaction to form a hard ink film.

The advantages of UV curing ink are:

① non-toxic. UV ink does not contain solvent and will not emit other pollutants except a small amount of ozone which is easily removed during curing.

② fast drying speed. UV ink dries instantly without smearing, eliminating the process of dusting common offset printing ink to prevent smearing. Especially in the iron printing process, the printing ink on the surface of the metal substrate can be solidified instantly, the baking and drying process is omitted, the continuous overprint is adapted, and the production efficiency is improved.

③ The ink film has excellent performance. It has good fixation on various printing surfaces (including non-absorbent metal surfaces), and the formed ink film properties (such as integrity, scratch resistance, friction resistance, acid resistance, alkali resistance, ethanol resistance, etc.) greatly exceed those of common ink.

④ Stable performance. The performance on the printer is good and stable, and the printing equipment does not need to be cleaned frequently.

⑤ Improved product quality. For example, in the process of printing iron, due to the short curing time of the printing sheet, the curing process does not need to pass through the iron frame, thus eliminating mechanical scratches and improving the quality of the finished product of printing iron.

⑥ Save production space and energy. For example, in metal printing, the ultraviolet drying system replaces the huge and expensive oven, which saves both workshop space and energy.

Its disadvantage is ：

①The cost of ink is relatively high.

②The price of ultraviolet lamp equipment is high. For example, the replacement cost of ultraviolet lamp tube is higher than the maintenance cost of oven. Transformation of existing printing equipment into ultraviolet drying mode has higher equipment and transformation costs and more investment.

③Printed article is not easy to recycle. Especially for paper and printed matter, ink stains are not easy to remove, which affects waste paper recycling.

It should be noted that when using UV ink, a screen printing machine with UV cold light source device is needed.