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Top Recommended Inks for Inkjet Coding in the Dairy Industry
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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.

Fast Dry Durable Inks:

  • 1240 Black Fast Dry MEK - This is our most extensively used Methyl Ethyl Ketone based ink. It dries in 1-2 seconds and provides stable performance within the printer and excellent adhesion on many substrates including a wide range of plastics (PE, PET, Polypropylene).

 

  • 3103 Black Non-MEK - Many companies are tasked to diminish or eliminate the amount of MEK products on site. For those customers we suggest the mixed base of Ethanol and Acetone ink. This ink has strong performance on a wide variety of substrates and is designed to have a drying time and adherence profile like MEK based inks.

 

 

Ink to Withstand Post-Mark Water Bath:

  • 1010 Black General Purpose MEK - Some dairy products, notably cottage cheese, have a post-fill and -mark process whereby the product enters a water bath.  The 1010 Black General Purpose MEK was initially designed to meet canning requirements and has superior adhesion in moist, steamy or wet post-mark applications.

 

 

Refrigeration or Grease Penetrating Inks:

  • 1055 Black Wet Process - This ink can be applied through a thin layer of moisture. It is water resistant when dry making it an outstanding selection for cold fill and frozen food applications, also products that are soaked or rinsed following coding.

 

 

 

 

  • 1063 Black Grease Penetrating Ink - This is another ink that has excellent performance in the presence of moisture. Designed for food applications where the code is exposed to oil later in the process it has a high quality mark, aggressive adhesion and a 1-2 second dry time.

 

 

 

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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