Characteristics and Application of High Gloss Acrylac-Corona Gold and Silver Ink

Hubergroup company

Hubergroup is a world-renowned ink manufacturer. The products provided are used in various fields of printing. Recently, Acrylac-Corona high-gloss gold and silver inks have been developed for offset printing, making it possible to significantly improve the quality of prints.

Hubergroup is a group company with no less than 26 manufacturers (of which 22 are in Europe). At the same time, there are more than 200 supply and distribution points all over the world. The company's original name was Huber-Groppe, which has a history of 240 years. Over the years, it has been providing printing companies with standard inks that meet the requirements of the production process, and its products are already in a leading position in the process.

Acrylac-Corona ink features and printing effects

The use of non-solvent media (such as anodized aluminum) can produce a very bright metal texture, which is already a mature process. Acrylac-Corona gold and silver ink is a newly developed product (also can be used to produce solvent-based inks)? Because the Acrylac-Corona aluminum pigments produced through special processes have a very bright surface, they are particularly suitable for displaying metallic textures with high gloss. The required pattern. In addition there is such a rule: the higher the quality of the substrate, the more striking the printed pattern metal effect will be. At the same time, by adjusting the content of the pigment, a variety of tonal effects can be produced, and for the high-quality printing material, an effect similar to that of anodized aluminum can be obtained.

Acrylac Gold Ink's pigment is a mixture of copper powder and zinc powder, while Acrylac-Corona Gold and Silver Ink's pigment is a special aluminum powder (and added color pigments). The ink composed of it can be printed on the ink layer. The surface forms a smooth plane, resulting in a mirror-like metallic effect.

Acrylac gold ink and Acrylac-Corona gold and silver inks are all polyester resins. Their properties are similar to those of varnishes. The drying method is mainly achieved through rapid osmotic drying and volatilization drying, and the oxidized conjunctiva dry part is quite small. It is more suitable for printing food packaging and cigarette packaging.

 Production of Acrylac-Corona Pigments

The excellent metal texture of Acrylac-Corona gold and silver ink derives on the one hand from the particularly bright surface of aluminum pigments, on the other hand from the use of this pigment to produce inks that can achieve very thin ink layer thicknesses, both of which are sources In this pigment production process.

First, aluminum undergoes a PVD (Physical Vapour Deposition) process, that is, vaporization of aluminum by physical heating and deposition of it on a thin film. This completes the first step. In the second step, the aluminum deposited on the film is removed from the thin film. It is separated into the solvent to make its particles smaller, and finally the aluminum pigment is combined with the binder and the auxiliary material to become a high gloss gold and silver printing ink.
Acrylac-Corona Gold and Silver Ink is produced using a special process. Its thickness is very thin (1/10 that of common metallic pigments) and the particles are quite small, so the ink layer during printing is very thin and the ink layer surface Can quickly form a smooth surface. Due to the thin layer of granular ink, hiding power is particularly strong.

How to use Acrylac-Corona gold and silver ink

When using this kind of ink, prepare two coating units for it on the printing machine (Figure 1, see next page). The first unit is used to make the bottom, that is, before printing the Acrylac-Corona gold and silver ink. A layer of varnish or other matching ink is printed; the second unit is used to print Acrylac-Corona gold and silver inks. An anilox roller and a cartridge squeegee must be installed on the glazing unit. The amount of ink is measured.

Of course, Acrylac-Corona gold and silver ink printing also needs a printing plate—an aluminum plate-based photosensitive resin plate, so that printing with high registration requirements can be completed. Due to the fast drying of this ink, the anilox roll and printing plate should be washed immediately after each shutdown.

Other related technical features:

î–‚ Because of the small bubbles, the use of tubular pumps has advantages;

î–‚ In order to enhance the light blocking rate, you can use traditional offset printing gold and silver ink;

 In order to keep the ink's performance stable during printing, it is recommended that the ink's cooling temperature be lower than 20 °C;
管子 The tube and printer are briefly connected to draw out the remaining ink, reducing ink waste caused by cleaning.

This ink, like the coating oil, circulates between the printing unit and the ink storage tank through the action of two pressure pumps. In order to keep the viscosity of the ink stable, an agitator with wings is installed in the storage tank. As long as the machine keeps stirring, the agitator must keep turning, and at the same time, the agitator cannot rotate too fast in order not to generate excessive foam. . The use of Acrylac-Corona Gold and Silver inks is similar to our original Acrylac inks, so no trouble is encountered in printing.

实际 Practical application of Acrylac-Corona gold and silver ink

Wanfried-Druck Kalden AG is a large-scale packaging company with an annual output value of 32 million euros and 170 employees. It can complete complex process requirements and has a complete production line from prepress to printing and postpress. They have some information about Acrylac- Experiences in the use of Corona gold and silver ink, such as gold and silver inks on offset printing labels for beer and jam, and gold and silver inks for chocolate packaging paper. It is a differentiated advantage of the company by increasing the output value of printed beverage labels and chocolate wrappers.

A comparison of several gold and silver inks

The comparison of the brightness of various gold and silver inks and anodized aluminum is shown in Fig. 2, and the components of various gold and silver inks are shown in Table 1.

In recent years, packaging printing has developed into a more mature field and can produce products that satisfy customers' luxury requirements on the production line. In order to complete the customer's various requirements for improving the quality of printed matter, a new type of machine is known as a "mixing machine", which can include offset printing units, gravure printing units, flexo printing, screen printing units, glazing, gilding, etc. The process is quite complicated. Calculating the parameters that are suitable for the common work between them is a huge project. It is much simpler to use offset printing, which will benefit customers in terms of production cycle and price. Before Acrylac-Corona gold and silver inks were developed, other gold and silver ink particles were too coarse to be suitable for offset printing. The ordinary offset gold and silver inks can be seen from Figure 2 with poor brightness. If you want to print high quality ink, Products can only be implemented using "hybrid machines" with high costs and complicated processes.


Source: "Printing World" Author: Zhou Yusong