Ink manufacturers have been busy in their laboratories tinkering with formulas for their water based products. Strength is the operative word today. Flexo inks now have higher strength for film printing, says Buystedt. They have been at higher strength for porous materials over the past five or six years, and now they re stronger for films, so you can run a 1,000 line anilox roll. The time to dry is reduced, and you use less ink.
Strength means a greater amount of pigment in the product.
When inks are stronger, you can put less ink onto the substrate, and you can turn down the dryers a bit because you don t use as much energy to dry the water. You reduce the amount of ink consumption because you re using less ink. The added pigment raises the cost of the stronger inks by about 10 percent, he adds. You have to have ink thickness to get density and opacity with a transparent ink, says Waddell, and most of our inks are made out of transparent materials they are a little translucent. So you have to have thickness to get desired densities.