The cost of glossy print

Remember the development and use of HyBryte inks

Sun Chemical has invested huge human and material resources to launch a hybrid product of UV ink and common ink.

Many people believe that printing or coating with UV inks is important for every packaging printer and those who want to improve the appearance of various packaging products. This technology is not only used in commercial printing.

Many printers are skeptical and repellent about inks containing photoinitiators. They believe that if ink is accidentally spilled on the skin, sunlight will ignite the initiator. If it is not treated in time, it can cause serious skin rashes.

But the focus of the debate is not here, but focused on the need for dedicated printing presses for on-line UV printing. If you want to apply UV varnish to an ordinary print product without a dedicated printer, it means that you must outsource the print product and lose the right to control the quality of the product.

Fortunately, over the past 20 years, people have continuously practiced and developed a set of technologies for the treatment of UV inks and coating oils. The application of this technology has been much smoother.

Has not yet become mainstream

However, the notion that UV inks are special and have not yet entered the mainstream process is still prevalent. People always think that UV printing requires different rollers and blankets. It is difficult for one machine to switch between UV inks and common inks. . In January 2001, "British Printer" magazine first initiated the topic of UV printing, and the relevant debate is still continuing.

There are many ways to get high-gloss prints. With common inks, the most common method is to resist ink absorption by paper by increasing the amount of ink used. Its disadvantage is that the amount of ink used is too large, causing a certain amount of waste and causing drying problems.

Many inks have bright varnish additives, but the raw materials must be adapted to the ink, which may require off-line UV varnish for pre-printed regular prints.

Increase the gloss of prints will pay a certain price

The gloss of the product can be improved by the above method, but it is at the cost of reducing the vividness and contrast of the color, especially for a halftone print.

For UV coating on common ink prints, an intermediate water-based sealant must be used to prevent poor mixing of the coating layer with the previously printed ink.

Even so, since the ink is not yet completely dried and the amount of evaporation and absorption of the coating oil in a short period of time is very limited, the dry back phenomenon easily occurs, which also reduces the gloss of the printed product. Some printers with dual coating systems generally repeat the drying step when dealing with important print jobs.

In order to reduce these problems, Sun introduced HyBryte ink, an ink system that has the advantages of UV coating, but eliminates the related problems. This ink greatly reduces the proportion of photoinitiators contained in common inks. . In addition, when using HyBryte inks, a variety of coating materials and cleaning solvents can be selected.

Road to Success

Although other ink manufacturers have also tried to develop products with similar characteristics, many people think that this road is full of thorns. Everyone understands who first introduced a mixture of ordinary inks and UV inks, who would have considerable profits. Sun became the first person to eat crabs.

Fabrice Bourgeois, product manager of energy-curable inks at Sun Microsystems (Belgium), is confident about the market prospects of HyBryte inks. He said: “The HyBryte is a group of inks, coating materials, and cleaning agents. It synthesizes general printing and The greatest advantage of UV printing is that it can produce high-gloss prints on a common press."

The basic ink contains some of the components of the UV ink, which is cured with a dual-lamp UV system before coating, followed by HyBryte coating and a second UV lamp for curing.

Therefore, for those printers who want to achieve on-line UV coating, there is no need to set a second coating point; printers with only one coater can also get higher gloss prints, and it looks like A layer of sealant was applied.

High gloss prints

Mr. Bourgeois also said: "Because many printing companies do not have a double coater coating machine, they cannot achieve UV coating on the line. HyBryte ink allows printers to print high gloss products on their original printing presses. For example: company brochures, postcards, posters, high-end packaging, labels, and magazine covers." So you can see that HyBryte ink can also be applied to lower-grade paper.

According to Sun Chemicals, UV printing with HyBryte inks does not require the addition of special blankets, rollers or plates as in the past. However, some people think that if this type of ink has been used, these issues will have to be reconsidered after a while.

Meet the needs of users

People using HyBryte confirmed that the glossiness of printed products is very exciting, and most prints with very small dot gains are usually completed using UV printing. A printing company with four-color or five-color printing presses and one coater is fully capable of performing all tasks within the factory and satisfies users' requirements for the production cycle.

Sun, which was launched after the Drupa conference, recently began tracking the use of four printing companies in the United Kingdom. A printing company in the United States uses this ink once or twice a week and has not completely converted to this new type of ink.

In Europe, people's resistance to HyBryte inks seems to be stronger, because HyBryte inks are even more expensive than normal UV inks, and UV inks are much more expensive than regular inks.

Early prices showed that HyBryte inks cost £17.43/kg, while conventional inks cost only £5.7/kg. Sun Chemical claimed to recover the initial investment costs, the price difference is inevitable, and HyBryte value for money.

At Drupa, people used HyBryte ink on a KBA sheet-fed offset press at a speed of 14,000 cph without any hindrance. The usual test speed was 10,000 cph.

However, this type of ink does not fully meet the advantages of the manufacturers, and there is no indication that European printers are willing to completely change their direction to use this new type of ink.

In the test on the manroland machine, it is possible to completely replace the previous water-based varnishes to seal the operation of the printed matter. The test equipment was an eight-color Roland 900 press. After two coater units were hung, it was possible to choose whether to cure the UV between the two coater units.

The selected test board is a recyclable material. This board was chosen because it is widely used in a variety of beer packages. During the test, the testers performed experiments on the function of the lamp moving forward, backward, left and right. The test results not only confirmed the high gloss of Sun's new ink, but Manroland also provided favorable evidence for this.

The real reason why many printers refuse to use UV inks is because UV inks are more difficult to print than ordinary inks, but there is no such problem with HyBryte inks. However, as with existing UV inks, printers using HyBryte inks are also difficult to control.

Compared with common inks, it is more difficult to control the ink balance after using HyBryte ink, and emulsification is very easy to occur. Although this may be due to the fact that one of the reasons for the selection of high-absorbent materials is, is this a market position for high-quality products?

Although this ink is expensive, it can reduce the overall cost because it is suitable for inexpensive substrates. Sun also believes another reason for the potential market for Hybryte inks is that the use of this type of ink can save printers the cost of investing in a double coater press.

If you haven't invested in a packaging printer using a UV ink printer, choosing such a new product may have unexpected results.

The problem of production efficiency

Whether or not to choose a two-roll coater is worthy of serious consideration, especially in the case of metallic inks, but overall productivity will drive printers to make such decisions.

Like UV inks, HyBryte has a certain viscosity. The ink stirrer in the ink fountain is very useful, but when considering the cleaning problem of the printing press, the people's intention to choose this brand will be weakened.

Manroland believes there are many factors worth considering. When using HyBryte inks, the cleaning of printing presses and blankets is not a simple matter. HyBryte inks are said to be more difficult to clean than ordinary UV inks, regardless of whether they use ordinary UV cleaners or biological vegetable cleaners.

There is no doubt that the direct cause of many difficulties lies in the high viscosity of the ink. The ink does not flow smoothly through the squeegee, so the squeegee must be cleaned, and because the ink does not decompose no matter how strong the cleaning agent you use.

We first recommend cleaning agents for vegetables, but we must strengthen the use of strength. In the process of cleaning the blanket, ancillary manual intervention is generally required to obtain satisfactory results.
No match was found on the manroland machine. Therefore, it was advertised that the use of HyBryte inks increased the difficulty of cleaning the blankets on the machine. Of course, it was more difficult to clean the blankets than the standard UV inks.

Manroland agreed with Sun that there was no need to replace the rollers and blankets. However, when more than 10% of India is ready to use this new type of ink, it is recommended to change the settings to suit the UV ink, and the effect will be better. When using HyBryte ink, the roller will slightly rise, but this phenomenon will automatically disappear once you return to normal ink.

For blankets, Manroland recommends the use of a hybrid material. Before using HyBryte inks, it is best to consult the relevant drum manufacturer.

The gloss of the prints obtained using the HyBryte ink was only slightly lower than those of the prints that completely used the UV ink (including the coating). For 100% on-site printing, Hybryte inks have a gloss level that is about 10% higher than normal inks.

However, some companies have the opposite attitude. Ian Stott, the manager of British IST, said: “At our recent Nurtingen sales meeting, people showed great interest in HyBryte inks. At the same time, a leading printing press manufacturer uses HyBryte and common inks As a result of the test, the difference between the two inks in terms of glossiness and adhesion was not significant, and the use of HyBryte ink did not result in better quality prints compared to ordinary UV inks, so we did not expect HyBryte to be able to Instead of ordinary UV inks, because they do not have obvious advantages, they are expensive."

The greatest advantage of HyBryte inks is realized only when dealing with complex meat tones and other halftone images. However, Manroland also stated that the color of HyBryte ink is less than most common inks, especially in black ink.

Manroland’s decision seems to imply that Hybryte and similar inks play a role in the printing of high gloss prints. However, there is another element that must be considered in UV printing. That is, the drying speed of UV and HyBryte inks is very fast, which means that the printed sheets can be quickly processed after printing, cutting, folding or sewing, thus greatly shortening the printing cycle.

These advantages can help ordinary offset printing to reach the digital printing production cycle. In a service-oriented market economy, printers can fully charge customers for additional expenses because they believe that this is a problem for a relatively short production cycle.

Sun Chemical is full of confidence in HyBryte inks, and we are unwavering. Let us continue to pay attention to the changes.