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Main // Articles // Solvent Ink: Your Choice ...
Solvent Ink: Your Choice ...
For more than a year we have been conducting profound research of solvent ink and problems
connected with them. Much water has flowed under the bridges since then.
We have created a testing and analytical research laboratory, which studies ink on the
basis of our service center Infiniti. We have conducted research of
dozens of ink types, analyzed a great number of articles and other
literature on the subject and a library of patents. During the whole
period of research we have received support from different research
institutes of Novosibirsk Akademgorodok (SB RAS). On the basis of the
information we have been accumulating for a year we have developed
our own compositions of ink and have founded a factory manufacturing
solvent ink. While developing the compositions and the technologies
we have taken into account the experience of other manufacturers,
their problems and mistakes, as well as their advances.
In this second article about solvent ink I would like to give more details about its
chemistry and physics. I would like to inform readers about their
influence on the quality of the final product, so that all those
interested in it don’t buy whatever they find, but select a
product with certain properties and exclude low-quality products. I would
like to tell the readers about new technologies of manufacture of
solvent ink, i.e. about the situation we will soon have in this
market.
Well, let’s start with the chemical composition of solvent ink.
In my previous article I gave brief information about it. Now I would like to dwell
on some things so that readers could understand the essence of a good
and bad composition. As I have already written, solvent ink consists
of 4 main components:
- Solvent
- Polymer
- Pigment
- Additives, improvers, stabilizers
Let’s analyze each component in more detail.
About SUNFLOWER ink.
Having armed ourselves with the research results, theoretical background,
statistical data about quality of Asian, European and American competitors
and having created our own development laboratory we started to develop
our own ink composition. Having taken into account the mistakes
of our Asian competitors and the advances of European ones, having taken
note of the recommendations of scientists, officers of different
research institutes of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of
Sciences (SB RAS), which is known as Novosibirsk Akademgorodok, as
well as having studied the information about new technologies and
advanced raw materials, we elaborated our own composition of
different ink types for different types of printheads. I can say for
sure that our compositions are unique, i.e. they are not copies of
any others, regarding both quality and quantity of ingredients. We
use only imported chemical components. Solvent and additives are from
America, pigments are bought from one of the leading world
manufacturers located in Germany, polymers come from England and
Germany. Unfortunately, the majority of components we use are not
manufactured in Russia, and those which are produced here do not have
the quality, which would satisfy us. We also could not find the
required quality of the initial raw materials, produced by the
Chinese manufacturers. Of 8 Chinese ink manufacturers two use
imported raw materials, three use both imported and local products
and the rest three use local raw materials only. In our production
process we apply raw materials of such famous world manufacturers, as
BASF, CLARIANT, DOW, TROY, WACKER, SOLVAY. Currently our laboratory
is conducting new research and development using the products by AKZO
NOBEL, AIR PRODUCTS, NEORESINS. This allowed us to create ink of the
medium safety level. The ink is highly stable according to its
behavior during the printing process with long pot life period
(according to the results of laboratory tests its pot life is up to 1
year). The ink is thermally stable, i.e. its viscosity
doesn’t change a lot if temperature changes within the operating range. It is
nonfreezing and heat-resistant, the temperature range for storage and
transportation is from – 28 0 up to +350.
The ink possesses high levels of color intensity and richness, because the size of
pigment particles is less than 0,1 μm.
Our experience proves that the development of the ink composition is only a half of
the problem, the rest is technology, i.e. the way of creation of a
viable system from the available components. All developments
required a lot of experiments. The high level of our theoretical
preparation can be proved by the fact that in the course of
experiments we have not broken any printhead.
The third stage, a very large, important and difficult one, is aimed at transferring the
technology to the industrial scale. And the most important thing is
not make a mistake while selecting the production equipment. And in
this respect the leading positions belong to Russian industry. Having
conducted a profound market research of the equipment, suitable for
the ink production, we selected Russian machines, which, unlike
everyone thinks, are not cheap, but possess high quality of
modification and make it possible to produce high quality products.
The laboratory equipment of the same manufacturer helped us a lot as well.
This equipment is actually the reduced version of the industrial one. We
also purchased a flexible production line developed by Japanese
experts, which is assembled in Taiwan on our request. This line is to
be launched at our facilities late July - early August this year. It
will allow us to quickly produce small (several tons a month) lots of
ink and turn to new types of products. In our industrial cycle we use
a multilevel system of ink filtration, manufactured by PALL, a famous
American manufacturer of filtration systems and elements. Our
development laboratory, as well as the laboratory of the final
quality control, is equipped in accordance with the latest technical
requirements and inventions. We dispose of all necessary analytical
devices for determination of the principal parameters of the final
product: viscosimeters and rheometers, tensiometer,
spectrophotometers, high power microscopes and a fadeometer. We are
planning to purchase a unique device, a laser particle analyzer,
which makes it possible to quickly determine the maximum, minimum and
average size of particles in dispersion, as well as density of their
distribution.
It is not easy to master the process of ink manufacture without any practical
experience and knowledge of the chemical technology. And
high-skilled experts are required for this.
We employ one of the best Russian chemical engineers, who once took part in launching
of the most complicated chemical ventures of Russia. There were 144
production stages, 400 tons of raw materials and only one ton of the
final product. One production cycle took six months. But even the expert of such a high
level, with significant experience in chemical technologies noticed the
complexity of ink production technology. Our laboratory also employs
a professional analyst from the analytical laboratory of this
production. Our production process follows all requirements and norms
of the Russian legislation. We have all necessary production and
technical documents. The process is agreed and approved by all
administrative control authorities: the Ministry of Civil Defense and
Emergency Response, the Sanitary and Epidemiological Station, the
Environment Committee, construction organizations, etc. As our ink
manufacture is the first in Russia of this type and there were no
such ventures before, it does not have to be licensed if it is
coordinated with all control authorities. The final product does not
have to be certified as well. But, in order to maintain our image and
quality of the manufactured ink, we will voluntary license our
production process and certify the final product. In the near future
we are going to undergo the ISO certification. At the moment of
writing this article production equipment was being mounted at our
venture. Trials will take place late May. The manufacture will be
started early June and by the end of June we are going to reach the
design capacity.
Our chemical engineers actively visit different international expositions on
chemistry, chemical technologies and analytics both in Russia and
abroad. They have meetings with suppliers, visit the facilities of
manufacturers of our raw materials and equipment. They maintain
permanent contacts with experts in manufacture of raw materials for
our production process.
Up to now we have mastered the production of solvent ink for printheads XAAR 126, 128,
500 of both series 200 and 360, for printheads Spectra SL-128, NOVA
256LQ, for printheads Seiko and Konika-Minolta. We also produce
permanent ink for printers with EPSON printheads. The properties of
our ink are not worse than the properties of the similar ink types
manufactured by our competitors, and in some respects its quality is
better.
To summarize it all, let’s speak of what will happen in the ink market in the near
future.
The most interesting thing is that the future of the ink market is better seen not by the
developers themselves, but by large-scale industrial ventures
manufacturing main components for the ink production. They are
manufacturers of solvent, pigments and polymers. The ink industry
market for digital print is rapidly growing and global manufacturers
of raw chemical materials want to have their tidbit from it. Some
global giants have even created departments researching the ink
market, its theoretical and practical basis. And
these companies dictate their rules in this market.
During negotiations with representatives of these
departments I have received the following information.
Universal fight for ecology, safety and health of people will make manufacturers and
consumers use new, safe ink types. Manufacturers will try to do
traditional solvent ink as safe as possible. The global industry is
already working on the production of safe solvent types.
Manufacturers of colorants are also mastering new types of coloring
agents and pigments for production of new solvent ink types, so
called Continues Printing Inks, which will be as light-fast, rich and
intensive as possible and less disposed to coagulation. Manufacturers
of polymers also reduce prices for their products having excellent
physical and chemical properties, which would be ideal for use as a
component of solvent ink, if their price were not so high. The market
of additives will remain inexhaustible, though new types of additives
appear all the time. Manufacturers of additives are trying to create
universal products, regulating all characteristics by means of adding
one of them. All this will influence a part of ink produced by the
most progressive manufacturers during this very year.
At the same time we are working on the problem of alternative and safe ink, of the UV
type, trying to make them as close to solvent ink as possible. The
main problem is light-sensitive polymers, which are either slightly
adhesive, or low elastic, which results in the cracking of the
polymer film on the surface of roll materials.
We are also working on the development of new ink types for direct textile printing. The
available textile ink can be used only for printing on certain media.
If ink is used for synthetic cloth, it cannot be applied to natural
vegetable and/or animal fibre or otherwise. In this case the problem
is coloring agents with selective ability to dye these or those fibre
types. But it is possible to select mixed compositions of coloring
agents with similar shades, but able to dye different fibre types.
And it is necessary to select a correct system for such mixed
coloring agents.
The use of permanent ink is difficult because the media should be treated in a special way
before an image is applied and then it should be fixed. Now there
already exist such ink types, which can be applied to any unprepared
media and do not require fixing afterwards, but there are very few of
them and they are very expensive. Price reduction and increase of the
number of offers are just the matter of time.
We are not going to stop where we now are. We will efficiently implement the latest
technologies in order to improve our quality and to reduce the price
of our products. In the near future we would like to master the
manufacture of UV, oil and textile ink types. And we are also going
to develop and launch the manufacture of new solvent ink types I have
described above. Our suppliers of raw materials, the global leaders
of the chemical industry, are loyal to us because our company is the
first manufacturer of ink in Russia, and if our products are able to
compete with products of the leading world manufacturers regarding
the aspects of price and quality, we can have a substantial share of
the Russian ink market. They are ready to help us in our research and
development activities, to give us recommendations, as well as to
supply us with information about the latest achievements in the
sphere of ink development.
That’s all. The material can be extended but the article is over.
The purpose of this article is to give interested people information about the
seriousness of our approach to the project of our own ink
manufacture, to make other manufacturers see that they now have a
strong competitor, as well as to help ultimate consumers understand
the essence of the problems they really face while using ink. The
majority of reclamations never reach manufacturers, they are received
by dealers and sellers. Instead, we would like to be closer to
ultimate consumers and to know all opinions about our products.
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