Plastic Card Printing Quality Improves with Plasma Treatment
If you’re having problems printing on various plastic cards, like business cards, library cards, loyalty cards or any other type of cards for that matter, it’s because they are made with polymers that are essentially non-stick. We are working towards discovering why it can be so tough to get good print adhesion and more importantly how the issue can be resolved in an effective and efficient way.
Most types of plastic cards are made with PVC. The ”non-stick” nature of PVC and different polymers and composite blends regularly results in inks stepping back and lack of print adhesion. Subsequently, when printing plastic cards, accomplishing solid print grip and providing solid overlay to plastic cards becomes an issue broadly faced by all businesses.
Having highly experienced engineers on the team, Tantec offers a vast range of services like encapsulation, bar coding, UV printing, DOD printing, surface cleaning and much more. With service standards above par or better than the industry standard, and state-of-the-art Plasma Surface Treatment solutions, Tantec promises to be spot-on with ink adhesion every time, even at high line speeds.
Achieving Good Adhesion when Printing Plastic Cards
PVC is the most commonly-used material to make plastic cards. It has a low surface energy of around 34-38 Dynes/cm² (mN/m), which is the main reason for poor adhesion when printing plastic cards. As a rule of thumb, the surface energy of the material must be higher than the surface tension of the ink in order to achieve good adhesion.
Normally, inkjet ink is of a fixed surface strain and therefore, makers regularly need to discover an answer to bring up the surface energy of the material being printed upon. So as to improve grip characteristics, it is imperative to embrace testing to decide the surface energy of the material and the surface strain of the ink being used.
The highly qualified engineers working for Tantec advise that to measure the surface energy of the material, a Contact Angle Meter should be used. After the completion of rigorous testing, the perfect surface energy of the material with respect to the surface pressure of the ink can be determined to guarantee predictable and dependable surface actuation levels.
How Does Plasma Treatment Improve the Quality of Plastic Card Printing?
Being an eco-friendly, cost effective, efficient and doable surface activation method, Plasma Treatment is the perfect solution for uplifting adhesion quality, when we talk about plastic card printing. Put simply, Plasma, which is a heavily ionized gas, can have adverse effects on a lot of materials ranging from polymers, ceramics, metals, composite blends to glass. At the point when particles are exposed to a high vitality, the electrons around the core start to ”bubble off” and the expanding temperature results in the atoms being too hot to even think about staying contained in circle around the core.
The free radicals and different particles that coexist inside the profoundly dynamic plasma release would now be able to connect to the materials surface bringing about the development of extra polar groups. This change results in the material presently having a solid substance appreciate for inks, guaranteeing great wetting of printing inks and solid bond quality. Alongside increasing surface moisture, this treatment guarantees a wider spreading of the ink and solid print bond. It also removes organic contaminants keeping the surface of the material spick and span due to a barrage of ions.
This makes it the ideal surface arrangement technology for plastic card production, as once the material has had the natural contaminants expelled, it is in ideal condition to get inks or overlay’s guaranteeing brilliant plastic card printing.
Which Plasma Treating Technology is the best choice for you?
Atmospheric Plasma technology is ideal for the elite requests in plastic card industry. Perfect for high line speeds, our effectively repeatable procedure can plasma-treat up to 30,000 cards for each hour and offers genuine adaptability to fit inside your assembling procedure. Tantec’s top-of-the-line services are offering Atmospheric Plasma that is cost-effective, efficient and smart, alongside being half the size of the conventional Atmospheric Plasma systems, saving up a lot of useful floor space.
Satisfied Customers
It was a feeling of great pride for Tantec when VCT Brazil, one of the world’s driving producers of credit cards, quite recently invested further in a Tantec arrangement that incorporates a setup comprising of PlasmaTEC-X. The customers are very satisfied with the arrangement. “After installing the Tantec solution on our machine, we did not have any problems with the printing of our cards. We achieved the quality we wanted and we increased our productivity due to the good operation of the equipment”, says José Alexandre, Production Manager at VCT Brazil.