In many areas of industrial printing, cold atmospheric pressure plasma is used to print on plastics such as PTFE. Plasma treatment improves the adhesion of the printing inks to the surface and thus increases the print quality. Relyon Plasma GmbH offers the compact PiezoBrush PZ3-i plasma unit for this purpose. It is particularly easy to integrate into existing production lines. The PiezoBrush PZ3 handheld plasma unit is available for manual pre-treatment of small batches.
PTFE: Low surface energy
PTFE is one of the most important fluoroplastics due to its good non-stick properties and extreme heat and chemical resistance. However, PTFE has a surface energy of less than 30 mN/m without prior plasma treatment. Plasma treatment with the PiezoBrush PZ3-i increases the surface energy to at least 38 mN/m. Without this increase in surface energy, it is not possible to bond the printer ink. The printed image appears faded, is not abrasion-resistant and the data matrix codes used cannot be read.
Cold plasma treatment increases readability
By integrating cold plasma treatment into the process sequence, good legibility of the printed data matrix code and its fatigue strength can be guaranteed even under difficult conditions such as friction and temperature.
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