Home » Printing on Ceramics: Screen Printing Ink vs Hot Melt Ink

Printing on Ceramics: Screen Printing Ink vs Hot Melt Ink

Posted: Friday, February 19, 2010

by Maria Savelyeva
Inkcups Now Corporation

After considering all the benefits and thoroughly testing the end product imprinted coffee mugs a factory in Canada has recently eliminated their high temperature conveyors, also called lehrs or kilns, and switched to screen printing with Sapphire CG series screen printing ink.

Ray Murphy, the manager of ICN-Canada was at the factory to help with the transition.

Ray reports: "By the time the decision to remove the lehrs was made, Sapphire CG screen printing ink had already proven itself to the customer. In a different division, which involves printing on varied metal products, CG successfully replaced three (!) other ink lines. This single series worked for all their applications, completely satisfying the requirements for adhesion, opacity and gloss.

On the coffee mugs, previously decorated with hot melt inks (also known as hot color inks as well as fired inks or glass frit inks), the CG screen printing ink worked great. The prints passed the scratch test and dishwashing test with ease. After passing the test, convincing the production people was simple. The lehrs occupied a lot of production space and drove energy costs through the roof due to high energy consumption."

Hot color inks are popular in the promotional product industry; their primary use is for the decoration of ceramic glassware. To have the ink cured, the products are placed into long conveyors at a very slow speed, where they are heated to over 200C and then gradually cooled down. The main advantage of this method is that the ink melts into the ceramic, making prints durable. However, there are many disadvantages of using hot melt inks:

Curing process takes more than an hour
The lehrs occupy a lot of production space
Fuel for the lehrs is a major expense
The lehrs heat up the work area, creating difficult conditions for the personnel and demanding heavy conditioning
Pantone color matching is tricky as one cannot see the resulting color till the ink is cured
Until recently, the majority of hot melt inks have been lead-based. Per recent revision of Proposition 65, this is declared unsafe so ink manufacturers are developing lead-free formulas, which have worse adhesion characteristics.

The Sapphire CG series screen printing ink, specifically formulated for glass, ceramics and metal for both screen printing and pad printing, solve all these problems:

Curing process takes only minutes
Printers are compact (tabletop models available)
There is no heating, thus no fuel consumption resulting in lower costs
Color matches can be visually inspected while one mixes the ink
CG is Proposition 65 compliant, yet has perfect adhesion and opacity characteristic

For more information on Sapphire CG series screen printing ink please visit:

http://inkcups.com/inks-thinners/complete-ink-list/Default.aspx

Original article can be found at:

http://inkcups.com/articles/screen-printing-vs-hot-melt/Default.aspx

More information about Inkcups Now-Canada also available at:

http://www.inkcups.com/contact-us/pad-printing-canada/Default.aspx

About Inkcups Now-Canada

Inkcups Now-Canada is a one-stop supplier for the decorators of 3-dimensional products, offering equipment, consumables and tech support to companies involved in Pad Printing, Tagless Label Printing, Screen Printing on 3-dimensional and flat items as well as Inkjet Printing, Laser Engraving and Laser Plate Making.

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Top-level comments on this article: (1 total)

» left by Sydney Spence
2 years 90 days ago.
11 fans.

Very informative! Great article! Thank you so much for sharing! Look forward to more!

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