Special Ink - New Shortcut Packaging

Marketers expect that the packaging and labeling of their products will have a role - really work - and will affect the perception and thoughts of those who see the product on the shelf or elsewhere. It is precisely this that has prompted the industry to survive and develop. It is also the reason why processors have entered this market.
But not everyone can produce shrink labels or stereoscopic pictures. What if you have a simple two-dimensional image of your printed product? You can use light or color. Glowing things can appeal to consumers, just like coloured fish (tropical divers should know it well). If it flickers, glows, or dazzling, there must be something in the package.
Special inks make labels look particularly beautiful, and people’s interest in it has grown recently. “Obviously people are paying more attention to luminescent inks in the dark, and thermal color difference inks,” said Dave Elliott, marketing manager at Adhesives & Coatings, Newark-Craig, New Jersey-based Craig Adhesives & Coatings.
“The categories most used in specialty inks today are thermal-sensitive color inks, light-emitting inks, pearlescent inks, and metallic inks,” said Ed Dedman, market development manager at SICPA. SICPA is a Swiss ink manufacturer headquartered in Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
In addition, there are photosensitive color inks and optically variable hybrid products, so there are many professional ways to make conventional print jobs stand out.
Special inks pose challenges to printers, but printers are still easy to master through use and training. For packaging users, metallic ink offers an alternative to bronzing at a lower cost, and for printers it means faster printing. However, metallic inks, fluorescent inks, other unconventional inks, and coatings are still expensive because the components used to make these inks or coatings are very expensive.
Metallic inks The most popular special effect inks on the market today may be metallic inks. "Usually, it is used most in decorative specialty inks," said Mike Buystedt, director of market development at Akzo Nobel Inks in Minnesota. They have been in this industry for many years and now the old substitutes have given way to a new generation of products.
"Vacuum metalized pigments have received a lot of attention recently," Buystedt added. “The technology used in its production can produce high-bright silver, just like metal foil. We can't get the same results for gold, but we are studying it with great concentration and expect to have products available within 18 months.”
According to Norbert Hobrath, director of marketing communications and services at Eckart Americas, Ohio, vacuum metallized pigment (VMP) processing "can produce an ultra-thin aluminum layer dispersion with a high metallic powder suspension characteristic that results in exceptionally bright reflectivity. ."
Hobrath exemplifies the difference between traditional metallic pigments and VMP metallic pigments: "Imagine a group of small mirrors placed on a table with many bumps on the inside so that the mirrors will reflect in many different directions and angles. This is a traditional metallic ink. In VMP, all mirrors are aligned and all face in the same direction, resulting in super-reflective properties."
"This is the biggest progress," Dedman said. “These very high brightness products are designed to replace metal foils. They perform best when printed on the back of a clear film. For metal inks, the film is like a lens. Some people print the conventional ink before the pure metal ink. Increase the metal tone or create a dark tone, you can also mix colors in the ink to achieve this effect. Now the market has a strong interest in it."
According to Dedman, one of the disadvantages of VMP is that “the best products are all solvent-based products. Of course not all products are the same, only high-bright metal foil alternatives are solvent-based. Water-based inks and UV have also been developed. Curable inks, but not as bright as solvent-based inks."
Buystedt said solvent-based VMP silver is “very bright. It prints like a mirror when printed on the back of a transparent polyester material. The same material, if printed using a water-based ink or UV-cured silver ink, is not as effective and looks more like Matte metal foil."
“They're a lot better than the old ones,” said John Signet, marketing manager at Water Ink Technologies, North Carolina. “Gloss is not as hot as bronzing, but it gives processors a good choice to present to users. There are already several examples of replacing foil with ink."
“Some of our customers apply a large amount of metal ink on the substrate and absorb more ink."
Signet added: "This is a challenge." "So far, the biggest interest is VMP ink," Hobrath said. “Printers see the value of the machine running faster. If you use online bronzing, you must slow down the press to ensure hot stamping. With ink, you can make the press actually open and get the effect you want. And the cost is lower."
However, the cost is a problem. "The ink itself is expensive," Dedman said. "But the total cost depends on the area covered and the number of prints. Even if high-brightness inks are expensive, they are usually cheaper to use than investing in foil and using equipment."
"VMP technology is very expensive," Buystedt said. "The ink may be $100 per pound or more, but the processor can use it economically. Suppose you want to print two decimal places: If you have a 10" wide press and use foil, you have to do this for The use of 10" metal foil for the two decimal points is wasteful. The use of metal ink is much less wasteful. And you can print halftones with ink without any difficulty."
"If you want to cover the entire tag with silver, you can use metal foil as your first choice," said Hobrath. "But if you cover most of the labels in white, you won't use metal paper. For the film, you can now use the ink on the bag instead of the film/foil laminate to get a metallic feel. This will be very Important, this has already begun."
The press operator may pay close attention to the performance of the metallic ink on the press. Dedman said that most metallic inks have no special adhesion to the film; in addition, their plastic deformation is extremely small and wear resistance is poor. Because they are not chemically compatible with the resin, conventional ink additives cannot be used. ”
"They will have a bit of a bubble," added Buystedt. "But it's not that difficult to run. If you print water-based metallic ink on uncoated paper, the paint is trapped on the plate because the adhesive penetrates into the paper. , it is easy to cause the reverse printing on the plate, which causes the surface of the plate to accumulate, which may be a problem. The use of different materials is often helpful."
Millions of metallic inks?
One of the rookies of metal inks Guiseley's metalFX company in England has attracted worldwide attention. The company's expertise is that the printer can first deposit a layer of silver metallic ink and then apply a transparent four-color ink on top to color it. MetalFX has designed a software system that can guide the printer to create colors. It can now reach hundreds of colors. It may be several million in the future.
“The idea of ​​printing CMYK four-color inks on the silver background has been long-standing,” said Andrew Ainge, general manager of metalFX. “But I was surprised that no one has yet provided such a system. So we began to realize that there was a clear market With the blank, we see the potential to print millions of metallic colors by adding only one ink, so we decided to develop such a system to achieve it."
Marks & Spencer and Safeway Department Stores are planning to incorporate metalFX technology into their product packaging, Ainge said. This has also attracted many other companies such as Eckart, Kodak, Creo and Gretag Macbeth to expand their use. Eckart, for example, is developing silver-based ink MFX systems for different printing platforms.
"This is a tool based on prepress design," Hobrath of Eckart said. “It tells the printer to look at how easy it is to make your packaging metallized as long as five colors are printed. First print the silver ink and then print four colors. Just change the color sequence to get up to 104 million colors.” The current MFX system has 615 logo colors, but as long as the tiny color changes, it may get millions of colors.
Pearlescent ink Pearlescent ink is the most interesting after the packaging industry relays metallic ink. "May be UV-cured inks or water-based inks," said Jim Wittig, vice president of New Jersey Rad-Cure. “Traditional pearlescent inks are based on the addition of modified mica platelets to different types of inorganic coatings, usually based on titanium dioxide or iron oxide. These coatings make mica iridescent, and the interfacial mode determines the pearlescent appearance. Crystal has been applied to flexo printing and screen printing."
The primary color of pearlescent is "some kind of ivory," Wittig said. "But now they can have a variety of colors." They are more wear-resistant than ordinary coatings, and processors often try to avoid die-cutting through the ink.
"Pearl ink has been around for many years," said Dedman of SICPA. “But some recent advances in pigment technology have made it easier to flow and can achieve better results on conventional films. In the past, they were more difficult to use because of the dust, which is much easier to use now.”
“One of the challenges Pearl has encountered is adapting the ink to the user's product,” said Elliott of Craig Adhesives & Coatings. “You look at products that are pearlescent in themselves, and there must be a lot of pearlescent material. Therefore, it is a challenge to make the label achieve this effect, because the ink will not reach the pearl saturation.” “The pearlescent is easy to fall off,” Buystedt of Akzo Nobel Say. "The printer should be aware of the layering between it and the pigment; the pigment will settle out over time, so you must stir."
Special inks for fluorescent inks, thermochromic and photosensitive color difference inks make labels look particularly beautiful. "We have received many requests for unusual dark-glow inks," said John Signet of Water Ink Technologies. “We have made a type of ink flash, but some inks are difficult to handle; we can formulate formulas, but it is difficult. The particles in the ink must reach a size that can absorb enough light. This type of ink is screen printed. Medium performance is better than flexo printing."
Fluorescent inks, and those that are exposed to light or apparent changes in temperature, give printers and packers the diversity they seek. Thermochromic inks respond to temperature changes and can be formulated to work in cold (eg beer labels) or hot start systems. Photosensitive color inks discolor or appear when exposed to UV or sunlight.
“We had received a phone call from a cosmetics company,” recalls Elliott. “It's a hot oil processing marketing. They want to put a thermochromic ink on a test tube that is going to be put into hot water, and the user knows when The correct temperature.” Such inks are also used for medical purposes, such as autoclave sterilization.
“Special inks bring diversity and competitiveness,” Signet said. “Processors of advanced labels are always looking for additional added value. They value these aspects and present them to users as much as possible.”