China Manufacturer of Silk Screen Ink

Hi guys, this is Grace. I’m sales director at China Rainbow Screen Printing Supply Ltd.

Our company is a China manufacturer of screen printing inks. Today I’d like to introduce the screen printing ink on PET film. 

As we know PET film is a plastic film material with medium and low surface energy. Surface pretreatment is required before printing to increase surface energy or wetting ability. Otherwise, the screen printing ink and ribbon will not be strong enough and will fall off easily.

How to make the pretreatment?

A, Corona treatment

Through high-voltage discharge, the surface energy of the material is increased. There are two methods: pre-processing by the supplier when making the material and online processing on the printing press. The surface tension of the treated film is required to be above 38dyn. It should be noted that no matter how much current is used to corona some PET materials, the surface tension value cannot be increased. Therefore, in fact, not many manufacturers use corona method for surface treatment, because the quality is unstable, which will affect the later printing of ink.

B. Surface coating

Pre-coat an ink-friendly coating on the surface of the material, such as corona-free PET film surface treatment agent and PET film surface treatment agent, to improve its wetting ability for the ink and increase the firmness of the ink. This processing method is the most ideal, most common and most stable method for PET materials.

After pretreatment, before printing, we must make sure below points:

a, The material surface must be pretreated and meet standards.

b. Use the matching special ink and conduct preliminary tests based on the actual production process.

c. Control the thickness of the ink layer and dry it thoroughly. Pay attention to the overprinted parts of the ink to prevent the lower ink from drying out.

PET material has excellent physical properties and chemical resistance, so it is made into various products such as bottles, membrane switch surface stickers, IMD panels, and self-adhesive labels. Our company has developed a series of screen printing inks for PET materials, including solvent-based and UV-based, suitable for PET products with different uses. We can show you some printed samples here for your references.