Frontier Reports from UV Ink 3

The future worth looking forward to

What factors limit the development of UV printing?

One of the points is to expand the color gamut of UV inks. These have become the goals that equipment manufacturers and suppliers are trying hard to solve.

For the future UV inkjet printing, the following aspects are worth our looking forward to.

(1) Third-party UV inkjet ink suppliers are gradually entering the market.
Ink companies, including Triangle Digital and Sun Chemicals, have been custom manufacturing UV-curable inks for specialized printing companies.

Hexion recently introduced its new product, HexiJet FlashCure UV Inkjet Ink. The biggest feature of this type of ink is that only a small amount of UV curing energy is required to enable the ink to cure while contacting the surface of the substrate. Compared to previous UV inks, very little energy can be completely cured. Curing easier means that UV printing can be performed on thinner substrates without worrying about curling, which of course means that higher printing speeds can be achieved.

(2) Although UV printing equipment achieves the same printing effect, it does not have a cost advantage compared to ink jet printers using traditional solvent-based inks. Therefore, UV printing equipment suppliers actively reduce the number of customers in order to expand their customer base. The cost of UV inks and printing equipment has become a top priority.