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Diagraph, An ITW Company, announces the addition of ITW Inks to its wide range product offering. Formulated for use in Marsh Ink Jet Printers, ITW Inks provide a cost-effective ink alternative that is low on price and high on value.
Click here to find out more about ITW Inks...
By Steve Liker, Product Manager – Large Character Ink Jet
Ink Jet printing enables variable information to be printed on multiple substrates including uncoated and coated corrugated cartons, gypsum, PVC piping, lumber and other materials. When choosing the ink to jet from your ink jet five criteria should be considered:
1) Substrate Type
The ink ultimately needs to contact the substrate, spread, dry and adhere with acceptable adhesion and durability. The substrate needs to be categorized as “porous” – absorbing the ink, or “non-porous” – ink spreading, but ink sits on the surface of the substrate. Inks printed onto porous substrates dry through absorption into the substrate fibers. Inks printed onto non-porous substrates dry through evaporation. Why not chose non-porous for all applications? Because the evaporative inks tend to require more maintenance than the less evaporative porous inks. Diagraph offers ink jet inks for both porous and non-porous substrates.
2) Dry Time and Adhesion
The choice of inks could be determined by the time period between printing and contacting conveyor rails and rollers or with contacting other cartons or products. Do some investigation taking into consideration conveyor speed and location of objects that may contact the print. For example, a carton is traveling at 100 feet per minute (20 inches per second). A roller is located 60 inches away and contacts the ink jet printed image. Therefore the dry time with acceptable adhesion must be less than 3 seconds to avoid chance of smudging. Diagraph has data on dry times and adhesion or could perform print samples on your substrate and measure the dry time and adhesion to help you chose the right ink.
3) Lightfastness
Will the substrate ultimately be exposed to direct outdoor light or to indoor light? If it will be exposed to outdoor light for days or weeks at a time then “pigmented” inks are recommended. Pigments are particles of colorant in solution. Dyes are liquids in liquids. Particles tend to maintain lightfastness much better than dye colorants. Diagraph offers both dye based and pigment based inks with information available on the ink lightfastness.
4) Image
Are you planning on printing text or barcodes? Since barcodes will be scanned and measured with a barcode scanner they require finer control over the dot spread than text. Dyes tend to spread more than pigment particles by wicking along the corrugated carton fibers. Therefore, pigmented inks may be your best choice for barcode printing.
5) Color
You may wish to consider printing with spot colors to readily identify and differentiate your products. That way for example your employees and your customers can learn to identify the carton containing your lime flavored soda from afar by seeing the Green text. Diagraph offers multiple ink colors.
So when deciding on the ink jet inks consider the above criteria. Diagraph’s Customer Service Associates and Applications Engineers are also available to guide you through this ink decision process.
Selecting ink for your inkjet technology – impulse jet, valve jet or thermal jet – requires an understanding of your application and some basic qualities of the inks available. We asked our inkjet experts for key information to help shine some light on understanding the ink options available in the market:
A: All inks are made up of essentially the same things; a solvent, colorant, resins and other additives. It’s the resins and additives that give inks certain properties that allow them to adhere to specific substrates better than others. Solvent is the carrier of the ink. Colorant is what gives the ink the color you see. The resin gives the ink the ability to stick to substrates. The additives are anything else added to the ink to give it a desired property (surface tension modifiers, dispersing aids, gloss reducers, etc.)
A: Simply put, the surface tension of the ink and surface energy of the substrate determine an ink’s adherence. An ink droplet is made up of many molecules of ink. These molecules of ink have to be attracted to each other to form this drop of ink. So, the surface tension is how much they are attracted to each other. If they are highly attracted to each other (water) then the molecules are close together and hold on tightly to each other. When the molecules are not very attracted to each other then they barely hold onto each other and spread out more. It has to do with the charges of the molecule, or lack thereof.
Water is polar, which means it has a negatively charged and a positively charged end. These negative and positive charges attract to each other like magnets do. For example, when the water is placed on a glass, it just beads up and runs off because the glass has no charge (non-polar). The water is not attracted to the glass. However, if we add soap to the water we alter the surface tension and the dynamic changes. Soap molecules have a charged side (polar) and a non-charged side (non-polar). When the soap dissolves in the water it allows the non-polar side to be attracted to other non-polar substances, like glass.
So, to make an ink better adhere to a substrate, additives are used to change the surface tension of the ink to more closely match the surface energy of the substrate.
A: VOC stands for volatile organic compound. With some exceptions, the solvents used in products such as coatings, inks and adhesives are generally classified as VOCs. Unless they are controlled, these solvents are emitted into the air after they perform their function. Thus, solvent emissions from products and industrial operations are one of several significant sources of VOC emissions. Emissions of VOCs, in and of themselves, do not necessarily give rise to health or environmental concerns. In many areas, however, they react with oxides of nitrogen (NOx) in the presence of heat and sunlight to form ground-level ozone – the primary component of “smog.” For that reason, they are regulated as “ozone precursors” under the federal Clean Air Act and similar state laws.
A: Dyes and pigments are both colorants. Dyes are soluble liquids and dissolve into the ink base. They do fade over time. Pigments do not dissolve as they are solids and do not fade. Since they are solid they may settle, or sink, to the bottom of a container if the ink has a low viscosity, or is thin and watery in texture. The weight of the pigments causes the inherent problems with pigmented ink. First, they can actually clog printheads if they’re too large. Secondly, if they are allowed to settle the ink will not have the same color.
It’s the same concept as pouring Italian dressing on your salad without shaking it. The dressing will have a different taste because the ingredients are not mixed.
A: One component of ink that helps it adhere to substrates is resin. The resins allow the ink to spread creating more surface area helping promote adhesion. Resins can be categorized as either brittle, semi-brittle or flexible. If an ink containing a brittle resin, like acrylic, is used to print on film it can ‘flake’ off the film because the resin is stiff and is not able to adhere and conform to the shape of the plastic. If an ink with a flexible resin was used, the resin would be pliable and therefore be able to bend or flex with the film.
Diagraph’s top-performing ink, ScanTrue II Plus, and all valve jet inks are produced in our Marion, Illinois manufacturing facility. All of our inks have been designed to perform at the highest level with Diagraph manufactured inkjet equipment. If you have any questions, or wish to better understand what kind of ink would be optimal for your inkjet application, reach out to our experts!
Continuous inkjet (CIJ) is the technology of choice for food packaging coding as the solvent based inks adhere to a variety of materials like cartons, plastics, films, foils, metal and glass. CIJ is ideal for food packaging in that it offers high speed, non-contact small character printing and enables food processors to incorporate inkjet codes into their functional safety and traceability processes.
Companies that produce food products are very aware of the financial and public health risks of a recall and therefore understand the necessity of being able to track products through the supply chain. For added food safety security, continuous inkjet printers can utilize specialty functional inks:
Thermochromic inks are developed for the canning industry and show a color change effect when processed through a retort or autoclave process. In addition to visual confirmation of successful canning it is a robust ink that penetrates thin coatings of oil and grease and resists removal by oils, waxes, fats and varnishes.
For secure coding of high-end products subject to counterfeiting or for products and packaging that require discrete codes for internal track and trace, identifying origin or verifying authenticity, there are inks that are nearly invisible to the naked eye but fluoresce under UV light. These fast drying, solvent based inks are water resistant once dry.
Traceability of food product is key to a company’s ability to react to a recall. In addition to providing coding technology that allows companies to trace product, Diagraph and Linx offer the following specialty functional coding inks that enhance food safety:
Linx Thermochromic 1281 or 1291
Our choice for fully functional, easy to use inkjet coders are the Linx 8900 Series line of printers. The Linx 8900 Series inkjet printers provide high quality batch, date, lot and expiration codes which are critical components for supply chain traceability. The Linx models are also durable workhorses in wash down environments and are easy-to-use featuring a robust, sealed printhead, one-touch fluid refills, a highly visible touch screen user interface and point-of-print viscosity control. The Linx 8900 Series line of printers support both thermochromic and UV fluorescent ink applications.
Continuous inkjet is just one option for adding essential date codes, lot codes and batch codes to your food and beverage products. Want to learn more about how your choice of coding solution contributes to food safety and traceability? Download our full whitepaper.
Coding for Safety & Traceability in the Food Supply Chain: A Comparison of Continuous Inkjet & Laser Coding
IJ/768 High-Resolution 4" Printhead 1/1/04 DIAGRAPH® INTRODUCES 4-INCH PRINTHEAD FOR IJ 3000™ IMPULSE JET HIGH-RESOLUTION INK JET PRINTER
St. Louis, MO. . .Diagraph introduces a new printhead for its new generation IJ/3000™ Impulse Jet large character ink jet printers. With the addition of the IJ/768 (4”) printhead, customers have four IJ/3000 Impulse Jet printhead choices to satisfy virtually any marking or coding application: IJ/96 (3/4”), IJ/192 (1”), IJ/352 (2”) and IJ/768 (4”).
The new IJ/768 printhead delivers sharp, clear, high-resolution printing of alphanumeric information, graphics, bar codes and logos at production line speeds up to 200 fpm. For true-type fonts and logos, it provides 192 vertical dpi. For bar codes, such as UPC/EAN and SCC-14, it provides 200 horizontal dpi.
Like other IJ/3000 Impulse Jet printheads, the new IJ/768 offers an automatic cleaning feature which allows operators to program the unit to self-clean at any selected times over
a 24-hour period. At the programmed times, the pump and vacuum device in the central ink delivery system (CIDS) are automatically activated to remove accumulated contaminants from the faceplate of the printhead and transport them to a reservoir for future disposal. The automatic cleaning system enhances preventive maintenance, improves print quality consistency, and prolongs printhead life.
The IJ/3000 allows users the flexibility of multi-technology performance. It is engineered to drive either high-resolution Impulse Jet printheads, such as the IJ/768, Diagraph’s patented Integrated Valve printheads, or the PA/5000LT Label Printer/Applicator.
The IJ/3000 Impulse Jet offers unsurpassed “smart” features: touch screen controls, worldwide networking connectivity, around-the-clock monitoring and diagnostic functions, high-resolution printing, and convenience features such as automatic cleaning.
The touch screen allows operators to control the system with the touch of a finger and enjoy previously unimagined levels of convenience and productivity. The graphical user interface visually displays menus and commands so operators can enter messages and codes in minutes. And batch codes can be changed during a run, without interrupting production.
The IJ/3000 Impulse Jet has a built-in high-speed Ethernet connection that permits networking with another printer on the other side of the factory, or on the other side of the world. For multi-location manufacturing customers with constantly changing batch codes, this smart feature is invaluable for making changes and checking status. The system is designed to work with Web browsers (including Netscape and Internet Explorer), existing local area networks (device net, arc net, etc.), or wireless (radio frequency) using off-the-shelf converters.
Another smart feature is 24/7 monitoring and diagnostics. Operating on PCs, PLCs, and LANs, it can be used to obtain up-to-the-minute system status. The IJ/3000 Impulse Jet can even be programmed to monitor ink levels and provide an alert when the supply needs to be replenished.
Like all Diagraph ink jet printing systems, the IJ/3000 Impulse Jet is built to last, with minimal maintenance, even in hostile industrial environments. It provides reliable performance in all kinds of conditions—hot, cold, wet and dry.
For more information, call Marketing Services for Diagraph Large Character Ink Jet Systems at 800-722-1125 or send e-mails to info@diagraph.com.
Diagraph, a division of Illinois Tool Works Inc., manufactures and distributes automated industrial marking systems and supplies. Primary product lines include: small character ink jet systems, large character ink jet systems, and automated labeling systems. With sales and service offices located across the United States and throughout the world, Diagraph is a leading international supplier of product identification marking systems.
Diagraph Inkjet Printer Links:
Industrial Labeling Products, Industrial Inkjet Printers & Applications Industrial Inkjet Printer Case Studies
No one wants to risk their health or the health of their family by bringing home dairy products with indistinguishable expiration dates. Regardless if your dairy plant produces fluid milk, cheese, yogurt or ice cream, if your product does not have a legible expiration date on it, chances are your product will remain on grocer’s shelves but too many instances of poor quality codes will put the dairy processors relationship with the grocer at risk.
Non-contact coders such as the Linx 8900 Series continuous inkjet (CIJ) are an ideal choice for dairy packaging as it allows high speed printing of variable information on a variety of substrates such as PET bottles, foil sealed cups and resealable pouches. The printer is built for harsh industrial environments with refrigeration and washdown requirements. It has a completely sealed printhead and solid stainless steel construction.
Linx 8900 Series printers are right at home in dairies, but how do you ensure your code adhesion and readability? Linx offers a variety of functional coding inks. Here are our top 5 recommended inks designed to meet the performance needs of dairy products.
Not sure which ink type is right for your coding application? Contact Diagraph today to learn more about our Linx ink selection and to request print samples for your diary product coding application. Call 1.800.722.1125 or contact us through the website.
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