Bottle Screen Printing and Screen Printing Materials Selection (I)

In screen Printing, bottle printing has a decisive position. It can be said that except for packaging and CD screen printing, bottle printing ranks third in silk screen printing. The substrates printed by the bottle mainly include plastics and glass. The plastics mainly include PVC (polyvinyl chloride), PP (polypropylene), PE (polyethylene), and PET (polyester).

The screen printing of bottles will be introduced from the following aspects: prepress processing, selection of screen printing materials, and attention issues.

Bottle prepress processing

Glass bottle printing

To ensure that the surface of the bottle is clean (mainly without oil, sweat, dust, etc.), it is best to wipe it with alcohol before printing. After wiping, it is forbidden to touch the surface of the bottle by hand to avoid contamination of the bottle.

Plastic bottle printing

In the past period of time, PVC materials have been playing an important role in bottle printing due to their low price, good printability, and acid and alkali resistance. In general, since PVC is a polar material, it is generally not surface treated prior to printing, but sometimes due to the aging of PVC products or the plasticizers and additives in the products transferred to the surface will reduce the adhesion of the ink, can use anhydrous alcohol in the bottle Wipe the surface to increase the adhesion of the ink.

Since PP, PE, and PET have properties such as wear resistance, good plasticity, impact resistance, chemical resistance, etc., they are mostly used for making bottles and containers, but PE, PP, or PET are non-polar or weakly polar materials. In order to obtain the ink, the substrate Good adhesion, must polarize PP, PE, PET, so that the surface tension of the bottle to 50dyn / cm or more (in general, the ink is the best adhesion of the substrate is the most basic condition is the substrate surface tension at least 50dyn/cm or more). The methods of polarization treatment for PP, PE, and PET include flame treatment, corona treatment, and the like.

All in all, before printing, we must ensure that the substrate surface is clean and effective polarization treatment, which is the most critical prerequisite for screen printing bottles.

Screen printing material selection

Wire mesh

The screen printing of the bottle generally chooses polyester or nylon mesh of 140-165 mesh/cm to ensure the hiding power of the ink layer and the complete curing of the UV ink during printing.

It is recommended to use Swiss SEFAR (Seifa) and Sanhe SST series screens, which are highly popular with customers due to their high tension and stability, excellent screen ink performance, strong abrasion resistance, and excellent adhesion to photosensitive materials.

Photosensitive material

In screen printing, photosensitive materials generally have the characteristics of good resolution, good bridging performance, high resistance to printing force, and easy recovery of screens. Bottle printing is no exception. In order to achieve the perfect combination of finesse and high-strength printing, Kemerai and Ketutai photographic materials are the ideal choice.

Squeegee

The hardness of the squeegee is generally 75 to 85 degrees, and the specification can be 5*25 flat or sharp, and the squeegee should have characteristics such as wear resistance and solvent resistance. The United States PLEGER, French FIMOR (Pegasus) is a good polyurethane squeegee.