M87 ADHESION PROMOTER FOR HARD TO PRINT SUBSTRATES
M87 is an adhesion promoter for use with UV inks and LED curable inks when printing on metals, aluminum, stainless steel, copper, coated metals, and other hard-to-print substrates.
This UV Adhesion promoter for metal helps UV inkjet ink adhesion onto stainless steel, coated metals, aluminum, iron, copper, Melamine (Formica) and acrylics. The M87 digital primer helps UV ink stick permanently to metal and coated aluminum substrates. This UV ink adhesion promoter helps increases productivity. Additionally, the M87 is widely used as UV adhesion promoter for printing aluminum cans.
The Natron M87 Adhesion Promoter is the first choice for coated, painted surfaces, and bare metals. This promoter works well with all types of inks, including UV, UVLED, and solvent-based inks. Additionally, it works on a wide variety of other materials, such as acrylic and melamine. Learn more about metal priming solutions.
What is the purpose of an adhesion promoter?
Adhesion promoters, also known as surface pre-treatments, are chemicals or substances that enhance the bonding properties between two surfaces. These bonding agents work by modifying the surface properties, thereby making it possible for inks, coatings, paints, or adhesives to bond to the material. In summary, adhesion promoters enable inks, coatings, adhesives, or paints to stick to a surface by increasing the strength and durability of the bond.
What is the adhesion promoter for UV and UV LED inks?
The M87 is an example of an adhesion promoter that is useful when printing with UV and UV inkjet inks that are difficult to bond to materials like certain stainless steel, melamine, coated metals, and acrylics.
Ink primer
Natron M87 metal primer improves UV inkjet ink adhesion to all stainless steel items and other coated metals. This adhesion promoter for metal strengthens the bond between UV printing ink and the metal substrate, primarily stainless steel. Once cured, the M87 UV Adhesion primer for stainless steel drastically improves the bonding and durability of UV prints made on metal.
This M87 Primer for aluminum beverage cans helps digital UV ink adhesion on metal using any type of UV printing inks. This is the ultimate UV inkjet inks priming solution for stainless steel items.
This UV inkjet primer works exceptionally well with all OEM inks including Inkcups S1 UV Inkjet Ink, Vivid White UV Curable Ink, and Mimaki UV Inks including LH-100 hard ink and many more UV inkjet inks.
A stainless steel surface molecular activator is scientifically formulated to actively transform the micro-structure of stainless steel surfaces to create permanent bonding.
This metal UV adhesion promoter creates permanent bonding through the use of nano-scale materials, allowing bonding on virtually every type of metal surface. Both stainless steel and coated metals, aluminum are common substrates that are impossible to print. Examples of stainless steel applications are Stainless Steel Tumblers, Stainless Steel vacuum Insulated Water Bottles, Stainless Steel stemless Wine Glasses.
For traditional printing UVMK and MG Series ink for screen and pad printing are ideal to print on all metal substrates. However, due to stainless steel manufacturing process, printing is challenging compared to most substrates.
What is stainless steel?
According to Wikipedia Stainless steel is a group of iron-based alloys that contain a minimum of approximately 11% chromium. This composition prevents the iron from rusting and also provides heat-resistant properties.
Stainless steel’s resistance to rusting results from the presence of chromium in the alloy, which forms a passive film that protects the underlying material from corrosion attack, and can self-heal in the presence of oxygen. In addition, corrosion resistance can be increased further, by:
- increasing the chromium content to levels above 11%;
- addition of 8% or higher amounts of nickel; and
- addition of molybdenum.
The addition of nitrogen also improves resistance to pitting corrosion and increases mechanical strength. Thus, there are numerous grades of stainless steel with varying chromium and molybdenum contents to suit the environment the alloy must endure. Learn more about stainless steel manufacturing.
What makes metal impossible to print with UV ink?
Stainless steel is an extremely difficult material to print using UV inkjet inks, due to its very smooth surface. Any type of ink does not adhere on stainless steel and coated metals. Most durable UV inks have a problem with adhesion.
In addition, the manufacturing of stainless steel and coated metal involves adding chromium which creates self healing properties to metal in the presence of oxygen. This makes printing on stainless steel virtually impossible to print.
Preparing metal surfaces for inkjet printing
Stainless steel should never be painted unless it has first been abraded with a galvanized metal-etching primer. It prepares the surface of the metal, which allows digital UV inkjet ink to adhere onto the metal surface. No other type of primer will promote adequate adhesion. Never paint over an un-primed stainless-steel surface, or the finish will chip and peel soon after application.
As a result, Boston Industrial Solutions, developed the M87 Stainless steel UV adhesion promoter.
Characteristics of metals.
Characteristics of stainless steel are moderate corrosion resistance, are not susceptible to stress corrosion, magnetic, cannot be hardened by heat treatment. Other uses of stainless steel include annealed condition, and have a poor weld-ability for most grades. This latter characteristic also makes its difficult for UV inkjet inks to bond
Primer for aluminum
Additionally, the M87 Primer for stainless steel from Boston Industrial solutions works on all metal substrates. This primer will 100% work on any metal substrate. We also make silicone adhesion promoters for aluminum and other metals.
Learn more about the Natron Primers.
The Natron M87 Primer uses:
- – Cleans the metal surface for printing
- – Aids UV inkjet ink adhesion onto stainless steel, raw metals, coated metals, and formica substrates
- – Also works well with UV Screen printing or pad printing inks.
