Waterless Printing Technology Features of Optical Discs

The continuous development of printing technology has enabled offset printing to be added to the ranks of optical disc printing. It can also be said that it is the emergence of new countermeasures caused by the continuous improvement of the quality of optical disc printing.

At present, the suppliers of optical disc offset printing equipment mainly include the German card stable, Taiwan Henderson, Guanyin, Japanese cultural precision, Gong Yao, etc. They are also the main suppliers of optical disc screen printing equipment. Offset-intervention-disc printing brings with it the excellent quality it displays in paper printing, and injects fresh blood into disc printing.

There are two types of common optical disk offset printing equipment: one is a full-disc type offset printing apparatus, and the other is a combination of a screen printing apparatus and a back-end offset printing area.

Offset printing in the disc features the following main points.

1. Thin ink

The offset ink layer is generally 2 to 3 μm. Compared with screen printing, the offset ink layer is thin and the stereoscopic effect is also poor. Correspondingly, the ink has a faster photocuring speed and less ink consumption. It is not easy to cause deformation of the disc due to shrinkage of the ink, and has little influence on the flatness of the disc, and is particularly suitable for the printing of DVD discs.

2. Printing graphics reproduction effect is good

Offset is an indirect transfer method. It transfers the graphic on the plate to the blanket and then to the printed surface of the disc. Therefore, the offset of the offset is small. CD offset printing is different from traditional paper printing, all waterless offset printing, its biggest feature is that no ink and water balance, and no watermark version of the structure is more detailed, offset lines can reach 175 to 200 lines / inch, printed out The pattern is relatively clear, strong texture, good color reproducibility, such as a better effect when printing some transitional colors, suitable for printing graphics with characters, landscapes, etc., especially some halftone products that require multicolor overprint, Better results.

3. Low drying times

The substrate for CD-ROM printing is polycarbonate plastic with high brittleness. Disc warpage is very likely to occur during printing. In particular, during the process of photocuring ink, the quality problem of the disc is prone to occur. In screen printing, each color must be dried separately, and offset printing only needs to be dried after four-color printing. This is especially suitable for printing DVDs. This is because the thickness of a DVD is equivalent to two 0.6-mm thick sheets. The CD discs are affixed together with a small thickness tolerance (200 μm for CD and 100 μm for DVD), flatness is also high, and the number of drying times is small, which inevitably reduces the possibility of disc warpage.

4. high cost

The cost of offset printing equipment is relatively high. When the optical disk offset printing equipment has just been put into the market, its price is about 5-10 times that of screen printing equipment. Even now, the price of one offset printing equipment can still be purchased for 2-3 screen printing. equipment.

Many people in the industry are very optimistic about the application of waterless offset printing in the printing of optical discs. Some people even say that this is the trend of the times. This printing method with huge potential is respected by many related suppliers and has been rapidly developed.