Print Process Descriptions: Printing Industry Overview: Screen Printing
 

Many factors such as composition, size and form, angle, pressure, and speed of the blade (squeegee) determine the quality of the impression made by the squeegee. At one time most blades were made from rubber which, however, is prone to wear and edge nicks and has a tendency to warp and distort. While blades continue to be made from rubbers such as neoprene, most are now made from polyurethane which can produce as many as 25,000 impressions without significant degradation of the image.

If the item was printed on a manual or automatic screen press the printed product will be placed on a conveyor belt which carries the item into the drying oven or through the UV curing system. Rotary screen presses feed the material through the drying or curing system automatically. Air drying of certain inks, though rare in the industry, is still sometimes utilized.

The rate of screen printing production was once dictated by the drying rate of the screen print inks. Do to improvements and innovations the production rate has greatly increased. Some specific innovations which affected the production rate and has also increased screen press popularity include:

Development of automatic presses versus hand operated presses which have comparatively slow production times
Improved drying systems which significantly improves production rate
Development and improvement of U.V. curable ink technologies
Development of the rotary screen press which allows continuous operation of the press. This is one of the more recent technology developments
 

Philosophy

Top quality every time

Our highly stable production process and highly reproducible printing results with all printing methods.
Development of our quality standard in accordance with the quality system DIN EN ISO 9001.

Main focus on customers

We specialise in printing inks individually formulated to suit the ever growing number of substrates and different printing processes:

• Screen printing inks and UV screen printing inks with excellent gloss and high resistance properties
• Pad printing inks with excellent adhesion to many substrates
• UV dry offset inks for high-speed machines
• Flexographic and gravure inks with high colour strength, brilliance and yield
• Toluene-reduced publication gravure inks with high yield

For a clean environment

Our top priorities comprise avoiding waste, reducing noise, waste water and waste gas emissions as well as ensuring the best possible industrial and plant safety. Our production facilities are equipped with a modern, high-performance waste gas filtering system. These efforts are underlined by the fact that we have completed an ecoaudit and are working in compliance with DIN EN ISO 14001 standard.

RUCO Druckfarben

Already founded in 1857, we look back on a long tradition of manufacturing printing inks. During this period of more than 140 years, the company has built a reputation as a synonym for quality and innovation.

IN Germany