Headquarter, Mitry Mory, FRANCE

Tel : 01 64 67 41 60
Fax : 01 64 67 41 89
email : info@encresdubuit.com
web : www.edubuit.fr
The Encres Dubuit company, ink manufacturer, is worldwide renowned for the quality,
the reliability and the relevance of its products.

We meet our clients needs in 4 areas:
Industry
New technologies
Graphic
Label

using 3 printing processes:
Screen printing
Ink jet
Pad printing

And manufacturing on 3 continents (factories in France, Spain, China and Brazil).

Encres Dubuit is especially well positioned on the UV ink market, whether its for
screen or digital printing.
Encres Dubuit has been complying with ISO 9001 Standards since 1994.
Light Fastness
Dubuit Paint, BRASIL
Tel : +55 12 36 44 15 50
Fax : +55 12 36 44 15 50
email : dubuit@dubuit.com.br
web : www.dubuit.com.br
Encres Dubuit Shanghai, CHINA
Tel : +86 21 6722 3661
Fax : +86 21 6722 3668
email : info@encresdubuit.com.cn
web : encresdubuit.com.cn
Dubuit Of America, USA
Tel : +1 630 894 95 00
Fax : +1 630 894 96 00
email : ageorgeon@dubuit.com
Tintas Dubuit, SPAIN
Tel : +34 934 770 990
Fax : +34 934 771 398
email : tintasdubuit@telefonica.net
Encres Dubuit Pune, INDIA
Tel : +91 98 23 71 09 00
email : spillai@encresdubuit.com
web : www.edubuit.fr
Publivenor, BELGIUM
Tel : +32 2 363 09 20
Fax : +32 2 361 89 59
email : info@publivenor.be
web : www.publivenor.be
In the ink industry, the major
technical demand, whatever the
industry, is to have a good adhe-
sion of the ink on the substrate.
For every application, in every
country, the prints are tape tested
24h hours after the printing pro-
cess.
Good adhesion is dependent on
many parameters:
- the ink must be suitable for the
application
- traces of pollution like oily
products, dust or condensation
should be avoided
- the ink must be well dried
(please refer to our Technical
Data Sheets for more details).
- the nature of the substrate and
its quality
- the surface treatment

Through this Technical Bulletin,
Encres Dubuit wish to help you
to understand the necessity of
surface treatment for some kind
of substrates: polyolefins plastics,
glass and metals, and also give
you some tips to be able to con-
trol and improve the quality of
your surface treatment.
One of the first technical concept
to understand is the surface ten-
sion and surface energy.
The surface energy of a substrate,
measured by dyne/cm shows the
wettability of a substrate to be
printed. (fig 1)


Introduction
Surface Tension / Energy
The surface energy of a substrate
is defined as the sum of all the
intermolecular forces that are on
the surface of a substrate.
High energy results in attraction
forces to another material, low
energy results in the repulsion of
another material.
The surface tension of a liquid
(the ink) can be defined as the
resistance of the liquid to deform
or break.
When a substrate has a high sur-
face energy, (ie it tends to at-
tract), and an ink has a low sur-
face tension, (ie has little resis-
tance to deformation), a good
wetting of the ink on the substrate
is produced, as well as a good
adhesion.
As a general rule, we found that a
good wetting of an ink is possible
if the Surface Energy is higher
than 40 dynes per cm.
The most accurate way to control
the surface energy is to use tools
like Dyne Pens (fig 2 and 3)
If you dont have any, you can
immerse the treated object into
water, then take it out and ob-
serve if the water comes to drops
or remain as a uniform layer of
water.



TECHNICAL BULLETIN
June 2014
Surface Treatment
Contents :
Introduction 1
Surface Tension /
Energy
1
Plastics
Intro
2
Plastics
Flame
2
Plastics
Corona and plasma
2
Glass&metals
Intro
3
Glass&metals
Hardener
3
Glass
Primer
3
Glass
Flame&silane
3
Surface treatment aims
to have good ink
ADHESION on specific
substrates
Fig.1. example of bad wettability
Fig.3. dyne pen on untreated and treated subs-
Fig 2. Encres Dubuit sells
Dyne Pens,
the easiest way to control
your substrate!
untreated treated
well as for large and flat subs-
trates like plastic sheets. The
main difference between Coro-
na and plasma is that plasma
treats only 1 face, while corona
must treat 2 faces , which
means that you must place elec-
Corona and plasma treatment
use a high voltage discharge to
change the surface energy of
the substrate. We prefer these
high-voltage treatment to the
flame when the substrate cannot
resist to high temperature, as
trodes on both sides of the sur-
face. This is easy for plastic
sheets, but much more difficult
when it comes to containers.
Corona and plasma
Plastics and surface treatment
surface energy (fig 4).
Pretreatment is essential.
Depending on the plastic shape,
and the final application, there are
4 different standard ways for
treating them:
- Flame: perfect for 3D objects
with curved and uneven surfaces.
- Corona or plasma: perfect for
flat objects and thin sheets with
low temperature resistance.
- Primers wiped with a soft
cloth for low cost solution.
Main plastics have chemically
inert and nonporous surfaces
with low surface tensions. This
makes them non receptive to
bonding with inks, adhesives
and coatings.
Polyethylene and polypropy-
lene for example have very low
Page 2
Surface Treatment
hottest flame region. (fig.5)
2. Control the mixture ratio
gas / air which depends on the
gas you use. (fig.6)
3. Manage the dwell time: the
slower the better, but avoid to
damage the substrate.
4. Adjust the air flow so the
flames shape is straight.
5. Check if there is any pollu-
tion into the capillary tubes by
placing a white paper in front of
the air/gas mixture without
starting the fire.

Then check the treatment with
Dyne pen!

Flame treatment uses a mixture
of air and gas such as butane,
propane or methane.
The flame has 2 actions:
1. Burning contaminents such
as oil, grease and mold release
agents.
2. Oxidizing the surface to in-
crease the surface energy and
wettability.
The result is a clean substrate
with chemical functionalities as
hydroxyl on its surface.
Tips for improving flame
treatment:
1.Check the distance to the
flame. The object must be in
the Luminous zone , the
Flame treatment
Mixing rao air/gas
Air Gas
Methane 10 1
Propane 25 1
Butane 32 1
Fig.6. mixture ratio air/gas
Fig 5.. objects best distance to the flame
Primers
1. clean the substrate of all
contamination with alcohol and
dry thoroughly
2. apply 2.5 to 5 m of primer
by spraying or wiping with soft
cloth
3.ink can be printed im-
mediately after the primer coa-
ting has dried, that is to say
within few seconds to few mi-
Adhesion promoters or primers
are solvent based, UV or water-
borne liquids, that can provide
good adhesion and superior
resistance properties to difficult
substrates, such as PP, PE and
TPO. The most widely used
primers are Chlorinated Po-
lyolofins (CPO) based on an
aromatic solvent. The
procedure for applying primers
are:
nutes, depending on the nature
of the adhesion promoter.
Be aware that this kind of pro-
ducts are usually considered as
harmful and need specific han-
dling and storage.

Material Name
Surface
energy
mN/m
Polytetrauorethy-
lene PTFE 18
Polypropylene PP 29
Polyethylene PE 31
Polymethylmetha-
crylate PMMA 33...44
Polystyrene PS 33...35
Polycarbonate PC 40...46
Polyvinylchloride PVC 38...41
Polyethylene te-
rephtalate PETP 41 ...45
Polyamide 11 PA 43
Fig 7. flame machine for cylindrical ob-
jects manufactured by Machine Dubuit.
Fig. 4. surface energy of various plastics
Fig 8. plasma electrode
Glass and metals are inorganic
materials. It means they are not
carbon based as organic materi-
als, like plastics for example.
Surface energy is usually high
enough to allow the ink to have
good wettability (290 dynes/cm
for glass, around 500 dynes/cm
for aluminum), but tto have a
good ink adhesion, a support
must have intermolecular and
chemical interactions with the
ink molecules, which is not the
case, as inks are organic mole-
cules. This is why in order to
adhere on inorganic substrates
(glass, metals) with the organic
ink, we must add adhesion pro-
moters or coupling agents bet-
ween inorganic materials (glass,
minerals, and metals) and orga-
nic polymers of the ink.
(thermosets, thermoplastics,
and elastomers) such as organo-
functional silanes (fig.9).

There are 3 ways of introducing
these adhesion promoters:
1. add organofunctional silanes
hardener into the ink
2. wiped a silane-based primer
on the surface
3. use flame + silicate treatment
Solutions 1 and 2 can be mixed.

Glass, metals and surface treatment
Flame (Pyrosil) treatment
How to identify silicon parti-
cles?
A flame containing a silicon
compound can be identified by
its reddish colour.
The layer of silicon dioxide
deposited is absolutely transpar-
ent but you can identify its rough
touch feeling.
The main suppliers of these gas
mixtures is Pyrosil.
This treatment is traditionally
widely used for glass containers
but can also be used for metallic
containers (fig.12)
Many glass containers are cold
end coated (CEC) in order to
improve the scratch resistance
and obtain a transport protec-
tion. This means that they have a
wax, usually Polyethylene, coat-
ed on the surface.
Therefore, to achieve good ink
adhesion onto glass, flaming the
glass surface is necessary in
order to destroy the wax.
In addition, a gas mixture of
silicon-compounds is added in
order to obtain silicon dioxides
agglutinate who form a thin
layer (20 - 40 nm) that bounds
the ink. (fig.11)


Page 3

Inorganic substrates as
glass and metals need
adhesion promoters ba-
sed on silicon chemistry
to bond to organic coa-
tings, such as inks.

Hardeners
of AM9192 into solvent based
inks and 4% in UV inks. Please
note that after adding hardener,
the pot life is reduced as the ink
viscosity in increasing over
time. (please refer to our Tech-
nical Data Sheets for more
details). The use of hardener is
the most widely used way of
improving adhesion as well as
chemical and mechanical resis-
tance.
The easiest way to add silane
based compounds is to add
hardener directly into the ink.
Those hardener are available
for both solvent and UV based
inks, but the % to add to the ink
is different. For Dubuit inks, we
recommend the addition of 10%
Primers
silane chemistry. The procedure
for applying primers are:
1. clean the substrate of all
contamination with alcohol and
dry thoroughly
2. apply 2.5 to 5 m of primer
by spraying or wiping with soft
cloth
3.ink can be printed immediatly
after the primer coating has
dried that is to say within few
seconds to few minutes, depen-
ding on the nature of the ad-
hesion promoter.
When the process does not
allow to add any hardener in the
ink that will increase the ink
viscosity, the best solution is to
add an adhesion promoter or
primer. This is the case for
digital inks, it is impossible to
add any hardener into the ink
cartridges. Those adhesion
promoters are also based on the
Fig 9. organofunctional silane
Fig 11. flame with particles of silicate
AM9192
Fig 10. Encres Dubuit sup-
plies hardeners and primers
Fig 12. adhesion improvement on metal
while using Pyrosil flame treatment