Application of thermal transfer printing on glass bottles

Thermal transfer film is a technical method that prints patterns and glue on a heat-resistant film, and adheres the pattern (ink layer) and glue layer to the glass bottle through heat and pressure. This process is mostly used on plastics and paper, and is less commonly used on glass bottles.

  Process flow: 1. Color draft; 2. Printing film; 3. Thermal transfer; 4. Baking.

Thermal transfer film is generally divided into five layers. The surface PET film layer serves as the carrier, and the separation layer plays a role in being suitable for peeling off when heated. The protective layer plays the role of protecting the ink layer, the ink layer is for pattern printing, and the adhesive layer is the adhesion layer.

Since multi-color patterns can be printed at one time during the film printing stage, during the transfer operation on the glass bottle, the existing pattern can be transferred to the glass bottle at one time. Compared with the tedious registration of multi-color silk screen printing, the printing work can be greatly shortened and the material loss caused by printing errors is reduced. Nowadays, labor costs are constantly rising, and customers have high quality requirements for accurate positioning. Therefore, the advantages of thermal transfer printing are very obvious on multi-color manuscripts.

In addition, in the film printing stage, CMYK printing is traditionally used, and spot color printing can also be performed according to customer requirements. The effect of thermal transfer printing is more realistic, the color reproduction is high, and gradient colors can be achieved. Because the image is heated and baked by thermal transfer, the color of the finished image will be stronger than that of water transfer, and it is less likely to fade. It has good properties such as corrosion resistance, aging resistance, wear resistance, and high temperature resistance.

In the processing of glass bottles, compared with water transfer printing and silk screen printing, the advantages of thermal transfer printing are more obvious.

In general, compared with traditional water transfer printing and silk screen printing, the advantages of thermal transfer printing are: less manpower consumption, high degree of automation, fast, accurate color registration, high yield, and less environmental pollution. However, the disadvantage of thermal transfer printing is that it requires high standards of the base material and needs to be operated in a more regular position. The processing of square bottles and cylindrical bottles is very advantageous. Special-shaped bottles need to be analyzed based on the entity to confirm the processable position. In the development of thermal transfer printing, in addition to ordinary toner inks, many new types of heat transfer printing films, such as pearlescent ink film, mirror ink heat transfer film, and hot stamping heat transfer film, have also been developed. Looking to the future, the use of thermal transfer printing on glass bottles will become more widespread.