The strength of UV printers lies in their ability to print on almost any material without limitations. Additionally, operating a UV printer is relatively simple, eliminating the need for manual screen printing. Once you grasp the key technologies of UV printing, you’ll be able to handle it easily.
The key technologies of UV printers primarily focus on two aspects.
- Coating Technology:
Coating plays a crucial role in UV printing, acting as a double-sided adhesive. The coating ensures compatibility between the material and ink, ensuring vibrant colors and preventing fading, since the ink itself may be incompatible with certain materials. However, different materials require different coatings. For instance, metals, glass, silicone, leather, etc., each have unique coatings. Some materials have chemical substances on their surfaces that can absorb ink, eliminating the need for additional coatings while still providing excellent printing results.
- Printhead Technology:
UV printing technology originated from inkjet printers, but has been upgraded. Leading inkjet printer brands in the market, such as Epson, Canon, HP, etc., dominate the domestic market with their technology. However, domestic developed inkjet printer technology still requires further development. Most domestic flatbed printers are modified based on Epson printers.
Epson printheads use piezoelectric inkjet technology, which drives piezoelectric crystals to produce expansion and contraction deformations through voltage changes, thus controlling the inkjet. This technology boasts the benefits of regular ink droplet shapes, no splashing, controllable droplet size, inkjet speed, and high-precision imaging. Therefore, UV printers can produce highly accurate and vivid images, particularly well-suited for handling complex patterns such as gradients, which are difficult to achieve with other techniques such as screen printing and transfer printing.
Once you grasp the two key technologies of coating and printheads, you have already mastered half of the essentials for operating a UV flatbed printer. The rest is about practice and gaining proficiency.
