Author: Martin
RAYLINE LASER Technical Department
The commonly used colorants for wall printer inkjet inks are dye (Dye) and pigment (Pigment). The amount of colorant generally accounts for 0.5% to 10% of the total ink, and a more suitable range is 0.5% to 5%. Whether it is a dye or a pigment, it can be nonionic, cationic, anionic or a mixture of them. From a chemical point of view, the dye exists as a single molecule in the ink, while the pigment is composed of flocculations formed by the aggregation of countless pigment molecules. Wall printers using dyes as colorants have the advantages of convenient preparation, low cost, bright colors, complete chromatograms, and not easy to block nozzles.
The color performance or color gamut of wall printer dye ink is better than that of pigment ink. When printing on a better quality substrate, the use of dye ink can achieve an effect comparable to the quality of silver salt photos. However, the stability of dye inks is poor, especially in light resistance, dark storage stability, moisture resistance and water resistance. The reason is that a single dye molecule has poor chemical properties under the conditions of light, moisture and oxidation. Stable, chemical reaction is easy to occur, causing the printed matter to fade.
In addition, wall printer dye inks are also very picky on printing media, which often requires special media support. When printing on ordinary copy paper, since the copy paper is composed of criss-crossed paper fibers, which are filled with colloidal substances, the hydrophilic factors in the general dye ink account for a large proportion, because of these hydrophilic factors The effect of the dye ink is easy to penetrate along the paper fibers, resulting in blooming on ordinary copy paper, which seriously affects the final printing effect. The pigment ink is developed for the above-mentioned shortcomings of the dye ink. Unlike dyes, pigments in pigment inks exist in the state of clusters of countless pigment molecules, so their impact on the environment shows better stability.
Using pigments as colorants, wall printer inks have excellent light resistance, water resistance, heat resistance and oxidation resistance, and are not easily affected by the weather. However, the liquid stability of the pigment ink is poor, and the dispersibility of the pigment may cause nozzle clogging during long-term storage. According to the above-mentioned respective advantages and disadvantages, it can be seen that the dye ink has strong performance ability, bright and uniform color, high brightness level, and easy to express the color tone, so it is especially suitable for indoor printing; and the pigment ink has good stability and durability. , Suitable for outdoor printing. Most of the solvent inks of EASY PRINT CNC wall printers use pigments as colorants. This is determined by the characteristics of the pigments and the market positioning of solvent inks, while there are few solvent inks that use dyes as colorants.
