Ink curing is an extremely important link in the entire printing process, which plays a decisive role in the quality of the product.
Compared with traditional inks such as solvent-based ink, water-based ink, and oxidized conjunctival ink, UV ink has the advantages of environmental protection, good printing effect, high production efficiency, and low cost of use. Especially in recent years, with the rapid development and maturity of UV LED curing, UV inks are more and more widely used in the printing industry, especially on high-end printed products such as cigarette packs, plastic films, and labels.
Siegwerk said that Siegwerk has been committed to developing future-oriented UV inks and coatings. Today, the company's product portfolio includes UV inks and coatings for a variety of applications, including food, hygiene and pharmaceutical packaging.
Sun Chemical says its UV-LED inks are an example of the company's commitment to sustainability. Its SolarWave FSP ink series is a migration-compliant UV-LED flexo ink that has also passed phytotoxicity testing and is in the process of being certified for composability. When cured under a suitable UV-LED curing system, these inks exhibit all the capabilities of conventional UV flexo inks.
In addition, Danish ink supplier Resino believes that UV LED inks can see a huge change from mercury UV lamps to UV-LED curing lamps in label inkjet, offset and flexo applications.
At present, people in the industry said that it is mainly driven by environmental protection factors. First, a large amount of solvents are volatilized in traditional inks during the production and manufacturing process, and the emission of VOCs is high. Environmental protection promotes light-curing materials to gradually replace solvent-based inks and coatings.
Second, the prospect of UV ink is good, and the market scale is constantly expanding. In particular, there is huge room for growth in the market scale of light-curing formula products in China. It is estimated that the domestic UV ink output is expected to reach 91,700 tons in 2022.
