The environmental friendliness of water-based screen printing ink

发布时间：2026/07/06 | 浏览量：0

For water-based inks, their excellent environmental performance can address the emission and pollution issues existing in the packaging and printing industry. Their most notable features are water and solvent, with low VOC content. Compared to solvent-based inks, they greatly improve the working environment for ink manufacturers and printing operators, thereby reducing harmful substances to the human body. In addition, they also reduce the risk of fires caused by static electricity and flammable and explosive solvents, and have become one of the important development directions for the greening of the printing industry in the future.
Currently, the most significant application of water-based ink is in food packaging, cigarette packaging, and children’s toy packaging. With the continuous development of green printing technology, green screen printing will also face tremendous leapfrog development. Therefore, the application of water-based ink technology in screen printing will become a research focus.
Screen printing utilizes water-based ink, and the diluent and cleaning screen can be directly watered, thus bringing great convenience to screen printing. Water-based ink has good versatility and can be used on various substrates such as printed fabrics, non-woven fabrics, plastic hard films, aluminum foil, and vacuum aluminum films, thus meeting the requirements of screen printing substrates.
1. Research status of resins for water-based ink
Binders are the basic materials for grinding and color mixing in the manufacture of water-based inks. After drying, the main mobile phase and film-forming materials directly determine the usage and printing performance of the ink. Therefore, researching and developing the excellent properties of water-based resins is a prerequisite for the development of water-based inks. Currently, the main types of new water-based ink resins at home and abroad include water-based polyacrylate, water-based polyurethane, and its modified resins. With the development of water-based screen printing inks, water-based screen printing inks will be more widely used.
II. Characteristics of water-based screen printing ink
The water-based ink system boasts a large water surface, necessitating high pigment dispersion. High-quality water-based screen printing inks require optimization of the combination of dispersing resin and pigment, grinding and dispersing equipment and media, dispersing and defoaming surfactants, as well as a small amount of alcohol or ether solvents to enhance the ability to dissolve resin, improve pigment dispersion, accelerate penetration, inhibit foaming, and ultimately prepare the best dispersible water-based ink suitable for the characteristics of printing equipment and substrates.
In addition, the pH value of water-based ink has a significant impact on the stability of pigments. When the pH value changes, some pigments with poor acid-base resistance may change color. Changes in pH value can cause the resin part to re-entangle, leading to stable aggregation of pigments in the original dispersion system, resulting in larger particle size and wider ink distribution. Larger and wider particle size distribution will have a negative impact on ink thickness, fluidity, and glossiness. Therefore, when preparing high-quality water-based screen printing ink, it is necessary to control the pH value of the ink.
The latent heat of water evaporation is much higher than that of traditional solvents, making the drying requirements of water-based inks a key factor affecting the application effect of the inks. In water-based ink printing, viscosity and pH value are first adjusted and controlled, followed by adjusting the wind force and temperature of the water-based ink drying equipment according to the actual printing speed. Additionally, the drying temperature should be determined by different substrates and printing areas. Furthermore, another method to improve the drying performance of water-based ink for screen printing is to add a small amount of crosslinking agent to enhance the anti-dilution, anti-alkalinity, and anti-acidity of the water-based ink system.
III. Summary
Currently, China lacks strict environmental laws and regulations for ink, but like the paint industry in China, the ink industry will inevitably face such regulations in the future. Non-volatile organic compound (NVOC) inks (UV inks and soy-based inks) and water-based inks are the inevitable development direction for the ink industry. The domestic ink industry must seize the opportunity and embrace the challenges and development direction of the water-based ink industry. Although water-based screen printing ink is one of the important development directions for screen printing inks in the future, its development still faces issues such as slow drying speed, high energy consumption, and high cost, which are urgent problems to be solved. Despite certain shortcomings, water-based inks have great potential for the future development of the printing industry.